Westinghouse Rail Systems Australia wins Metrol contract with SystematICS

Westinghouse Rail Systems Australia wins Metrol contract with SystematICS

Westinghouse Rail Systems Australia Limited (WRSA), part of the Invensys Rail Group, has been awarded a A$27M contract to design, install, commission, maintain and support the Core Train Control and Monitoring System (Core TCMS) at Melbourne’s Metropolitan Train Control facility, known as ‘Metrol’.

The contract has been awarded by the DOI (Department of Infrastructure, Victoria) as part of their progressive upgrade of the urban rail transport system serving the Melbourne area.

The existing train control system was first installed in 1982 and still relies on much of the technology supplied at that time. Many of the operations are paper or manually based, limiting the potential capacity of the railway.

Melbourne has the second largest metropolitan rail network in Australia catering for 146 million passengers each year, travelling over 850 kilometres of track. The main station of Melbourne’s metropolitan rail services, Flinders Street, supports a maximum density of 410 train movements during its morning peak from 7-9am. The new system will coordinate the city's 11,000 weekly train services and allow for future expansion.

WRSA has worked with the DOI to agree a detailed system definition as part of the tender process and will supply a SystematICS™ control system, customised to meet DOI needs. SystematICS™ is a certified Safety Integrity Level 2 environment that integrates all other functional subsystems required for total control of any railway. The extremely high availability and advanced train control features of SystematICS™ will assure Melbourne commuters of dependable rail services under all conditions.

With expertise gained worldwide on similar projects, WRSA will replace the train control and monitoring system at Metrol without causing disruption for commuters. This stage of upgrading work, due for completion in November 2010, will be carried out whilst the existing control site is still operational.

The new system will be designed to enter timetables and generate traffic plans as well as provide train reporting, train describer, electronic train graph and automatic route setting functionality. These train control applications will provide real time data of train arrivals and departures to enhance the existing passenger information systems and facilitate on-line staff and fleet resource integration.

Supporting the whole operation will be a dedicated test and training simulator used both to validate the system’s functionality and certify trained staff on its operational use.

The contract includes five years maintenance support of the core TCMS with an option for a further five years support.

The Westinghouse SystematICS™ platform is ideally designed to support any future enhancements to the Core TCMS, providing DOI with a world class train control and monitoring system that can be easily expanded for many years to come.

With the Westinghouse SystematICS™ platform and the ongoing maintenance support for core TCMS, WRSA aims to provide Melbourne with the latest technology to provide reliable rail operations into the decades to come.