Enhancement of blocking-time theory to represent future interlocking architectures

EasyChair Preprint no. 897

Abstract

Recently, railway-infrastructure managers and suppliers have launched major programs with the aim to revise – or even reinvent – the overall interlocking architectures plus adjacent systems and operational principles. Representatives of such initiatives are “SmartRail 4.0” and “Digitale Schiene Deutschland”. Those programs are backed-up by a set of motivations, namely: Existing command and control technology is overaged or becomes outdated, skills to maintain technology get lost due to demographic aging, applied technology is expensive and does not allow any further capacity gain.

Since capacity improvement is a core target of all programs, there is a severe need to express the capacity impact of the related system architecture. Such quantifications serve the broad portfolio from political decision processes to detailed requirement specifications.

This article describes necessary extensions of the blocking-time model to meet the requirements of future interlocking architectures in detail. It contributes to extent the standardised blocking-time model in such a manner, that its applicability is ensured in different setups. Besides providing and extending the theoretic background, the article provides examples of practical computations and applications. They cover sensitivity analysis to elaborate the decisive impact parameters on headway times as well as timetabling-studies based on a future technology setup.

Keyphrases: capacity, interlocking, modelling, signalling, Traffic Management System, train control

@Booklet{EasyChair:897,
  author = {Thorsten Büker and Thomas Graffagnino and Eike Hennig and Alexander Kuckelberg},
  title = {Enhancement of blocking-time theory to represent future interlocking architectures},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 897},
  doi = {10.29007/j33n},
  year = {EasyChair, 2019}}