What is a railway control system?

The railway system is shown in Figure 1.

You can see in Figure 1 that the railway system has many interactions with the outside world.

You can also see that the railway control system, which lives within the railway system, has many interactions with the other parts of the railway system.

You can also see that the railway control system interacts (directly or indirectly) with the outside world. For instance, a failure of the railway control system might cause train delays in the railway system which, in turn, affects the journey quality experienced by passengers.

The railway control system is shown in Figure 2.

You can see in Figure 2 that the railway control system consists of many subsystems which interact with each other.

The hierarchy of subsystems within the railway control system is shown in Figure 3.

You can see at the bottom left of Figure 3 the signalling subsystems – for instance interlockings, train detection, points and signal aspects.

You can also see the higher-level subsystems that are being introduced on various railways – for instance automatic train control and automatic train supervision.

You can also see at the top right of Figure 3 subsystems that are not directly related to the movement of trains – for instance fire protection, crowd control and lift control. Especially in new underground metro stations, these subsystems will be integrated into an overall control system (or, at least, remotely controlled from the control centre) for the purposes of emergency management, energy saving, etc.

In summary:

• The railway control system interacts with the railway system and also with the outside world
• The railway control system has many subsystems that interact with each other
• The railway control system consists not only of the signalling subsystems, but also of other subsystems (some of which are not directly related to the movement of trains).

[1] D. Woodland, “Optimisation of automatic train protection systems,” Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. Mech. Eng., Univ. of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, 2004. [Online]. Available: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/14543/1/531116.pdf. Accessed: April 17, 2023.