ROC strategy and build progress

[carriageline]

From what I have seen and heard (this is the ROC version) that it will tell you of potential conflicts, and it can tell you a predicted amount of delay the train will cause up and down the country, and give you a 'best option' IE regulate X before Y. It will also predict conflict in the WTT which will (hopefully) result in better planning.

In theory, that will be better than any regulation than a signaller can make. It should make them well informed with the tools to do a good job. But in reality, well...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Class377/5]

Really? Today's signallers are scared of their own shadows in case they regulate a service correctly avoid causing loads of delays & yet still get a code O on their record. :roll:

As for ROC's I can't wait for weather to start playing games with one. I mean a severe electrical storm at say Didcot or Basingstoke has the potential to shutdown the entire sector that it controls.

Just think a severe electrical storm in Oxon, in the future could potentially stop a every train service from Paddington to sunny Penzance! And for those who say it'll never happen, it may statistically seem very unlikely, but you can almost guarantee that the weather will break those odds.

Obviously, no one in NR has ever heard the adage of not putting all of your eggs in one basket.

TMS will allow signallers to make decisions, not make them for them and have back up for it.

Think you'll find the ROCs do better than the current system. I've seen miles of track taken out with an local issue while the ROC kept going. Any suggestion that the ROCs aren't build with back ups has never near one.

My personal view is bring on TMS asap. I've spent time with the teams developing it (like Roger Ford did in Modern Railways) and I was very impressed. Even seen the full KO2 timetable in TMS running 'live'.

 

[Yabbadabba]

From what I have seen and heard (this is the ROC version) that it will tell you of potential conflicts, and it can tell you a predicted amount of delay the train will cause up and down the country, and give you a 'best option' IE regulate X before Y. It will also predict conflict in the WTT which will (hopefully) result in better planning.

In theory, that will be better than any regulation than a signaller can make. It should make them well informed with the tools to do a good job. But in reality, well...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That will be the same for all three versions, the difference between the three versions is how much interactions it has with the signalling interlocking, ie none, ARS only or total control. Romford and Cardiff will be total control the rest of us will see the lowest function moving up to the middle function upon migration to the ROCs under their current plans.

 

[MarkyT]

Another key component that can be useful for better junction regulation is an intelligent dynamic driver advisory system. Thus when the advanced conflict resolution systems and the signaller have agreed on a regulation strategy for a particular scenario, the speeds of approaching trains can be adjusted accordingly to choreograph the movements through junctions and avoid, as much as possible, any addition unplanned stops. In most cases, especially for heavier trains such as freight, it is much more efficient energy-wise and costs less delay overall to approach a junction more slowly and not have to stop, compared to racing at full speed only to have to come to a complete stand and re-accelerate from rest.

 

[Bald Rick]

The electrical storms we've had of recent are nothing compared to what they used to be, so a comparison isn't really available.

The last really big one was years (10+) when three storm systems merged to make a "super cell" and that went on for hours & hours. I can't remember a decent storm &/or it lasting for a reasonably long time (>2 hrs) in recent years.

Every one of the signalboxes listed has been around for at least 14 years, and in some cases well past 30.

Slightly OT, but lightning protection is SO much better for big boxes than small ones. I once had a signaller struck by lightning conducted through rails and point rodding, which subsequently closed a regional line for several hours while he was seen to and the equipment repaired. ROCs are just not going to be knocked out by lightning, in the same way as air traffic control or national grid control isn't. In 20 years of the railway I have never known a computer based interlocking in a major signalling centre knocked out by lightning.

The ground equipment might, but that will be localised to the area of the lightning strike. It doesn't matter whether it is controlled by a ROC or one man in a shed, the effect is the same.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

So what's the benefit of the TMS stuff then?

I can't see it allowing a signaller who's got the gonads to regulate the service off the top of his head to do so & avoid causing delays which will increase at an exponential rate, if they don't.

Full TM is a completely different concept to signalling as we know it today. At it's basic level, today, signallers manage space, and regulate trains to avoid conflicts. (Obviously there's much more than this).

TM manages the space for you, allowing signallers to manage the timetable. Even better, TM proposes how might manage the timetable to minimise delay by detecting and resolving conflicts in the future.

A good by product is that the train graphing can predict delay where trains catch each other up, or where a late inbound train will then form a late outbound train, and this can feed directly to CIS automatically. (Customers waiting for trains home at Waterloo East will particularly welcome this feature).

It's nothing new in this country, HS1 has been running a simplified version of TM for 11 years, albeit without conflict resolution operating.

 

[LAX54]

TM will only be as good as the timetable, and if everyone signs up for it,the WTT / VSTP / STP etc will need to be beefed up and improved 100% if not, then TMS will be worse than a Signalman doing the Job, at the moment if a train is late at Point B he knows when it will be getting to Point C, he is quite capable of regulating at Point C just as well as TMS or better, as he will know what the timetable says and the 'real' running time.
TMS will also need to be updated many times a day to keep track of what 'real' staff are told via pager / fax / email / phone and noted down.
As for TMS working OK on HS1, of course it does, it is a dedicated line with no junctions, no slow trains, no freights etc etc,
TM works too in the USA, there is one 'centre; that boasts some 8000 miles of track or more, and few delays. they also say they run upwards of 800 trains a day !

 

[Olaf]

"Completed in 15 years" brilliant! That won't happen


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes that is unrealistic, but I also think that is a mis-quote. The new emphasis is to get principle corridors at an earlier stage to see a better return on the investment. However it is good that the standards are being raised because the 30 year time-scale was too conservative - NR really needs to up it's tempo in this area because it is critical to improving capacity.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

As for ROC's I can't wait for weather to start playing games with one. I mean a severe electrical storm at say Didcot or Basingstoke has the potential to shutdown the entire sector that it controls.

Just think a severe electrical storm in Oxon, in the future could potentially stop a every train service from Paddington to sunny Penzance! And for those who say it'll never happen, it may statistically seem very unlikely, but you can almost guarantee that the weather will break those odds.

Obviously, no one in NR has ever heard the adage of not putting all of your eggs in one basket.

Sorry, but resilient design is old hat these days - there are few other industries that still live in the steam age.

 

[Joseph_Locke]

Sorry, but resilient design is old hat these days - there are few other industries that still live in the steam age.

The UK has rain? How did NR miss that? :roll:

Not only can the ROCs survive extended power cuts (but that would have to generally be two seperate REC failures and the nearest SSP) but the main communications are via redundant multi-core fibre optics and the buildings have a degree of anti-terrorist hardening as well.

Do you have any figures for the frequency at which larger signal boxes have to be closed / evacuated due to unforseen events such as lightning, floods, pestilence, etc.?

It's worth remembering that if (say) Basford Hall box caught fire it would have almost exactly the same effect on the WCML as if Crewe SCC went down.

 

[petersi]

Kings cross due to gas cylinder fire on near by building site.

 

[Tomnick]

Yes that is unrealistic, but I also think that is a mis-quote. The new emphasis is to get principle corridors at an earlier stage to see a better return on the investment. However it is good that the standards are being raised because the 30 year time-scale was too conservative - NR really needs to up it's tempo in this area because it is critical to improving capacity.

I'm not convinced that the shift to ROCs will do much for capacity. For the most part, they'll still be controlling the same kit on the ground for the time being. Cab signalling might bring about a small increase in capacity on long stretches of plain line, but - even with moving block - it'll still be heavily constrained by conflicting moves at junctions, trains with different speed profiles and so on. Under lineside signalling, four aspect, headways of three minutes - even less in a couple of lower-speed examples - can be readily achieved. How many routes come close to requiring this sort of plain line capacity at present? Most don't, partly because there aren't that many paths across a key junction, or because a stopping passenger or slow freight eats up a lot of capacity twice an hour.

Where it'll come into its own, I think, is with the rollout of TMS, which seems (from what little we've seen of it) to be a potentially excellent tool to aid decision making and the recovery from disruption. I understand that it's not necessarily to be limited to ROCs though - it can be implemented in existing signalling locations, albeit perhaps without the ability to do the signalling itself.

The incident with gas cylinders at Kings Cross and the evacuation of Three Bridges (the existing panel, not the ROC) seemed to cause their fair share of chaos. Taking out any single key point of the network is going to cause a lot of disruption across a much wider area, even if the eggs are well distributed across several baskets! On that basis, it seems to make sense to concentrate on making a single signalling location as resilient as possible rather than relying on the false sense of security created by having many different locations, each with the potential to cause widespread problems.

 

[MarkyT]

I'm not convinced that the shift to ROCs will do much for capacity . . . Where it'll come into its own, I think, is with the rollout of TMS, which seems (from what little we've seen of it) to be a potentially excellent tool to aid decision making and the recovery from disruption. I understand that it's not necessarily to be limited to ROCs though - it can be implemented in existing signalling locations, albeit perhaps without the ability to do the signalling itself.

That's it in a nutshell. The goal of TMS is to put into the hands of a signaller (or controller, whoever's going to do it) the tools to quickly run a number of alternative regulating strategies on a graph or map simulation with respect to a particular developing scenario and choose a truly optimum solution, and at the same time automatically store a computer generated record of the decision making process in order to justify the course of action if challenged later by an operator.

To an extent the size of a control centre itself is not critical as long as it's big enough for the required overview at the particular workstation, but the large ROCs have potential to add further value when the input from co-located TOC rolling stock and crew controllers as well as other infrastructure controllers, such as electrification operators and maintenance controllers, can be taken into account. The information can also flow back the other way so TOCs and FOCs can be quickly informed of the ongoing evolving regulating plans and they can put into place their contingency staffing, serviceing and maintenance plans.

Another tool, also not dependent intrinsically on large ROCs, is a dynamic driver advisory system with the ability to inform train crew appropriate speeds to approach junctions, or revised passing times at junctions as appropriate, to help avoid additional unscheduled stops for unplanned but unavoidable conflicts at junctions.

Taken together all these tools should allow the railway to cope much better with real time disruption, without perhaps unknowingly making decisions that actually make overall delay worse and take capacity out of the network. The old Railtrack style operating regime, where if train A missed its slot it had to give way to B, even if that decision delayed C, D, E and F and caused chaos all afternoon, should then be well and truly over, at last.

 

[The Planner]

Not convinced by DAS as it will make optimisation of timetables very difficult as it will limit the amount of "true" data available if it is continues to be based on existing running times. Level 2 ETCS isnt going to deliver capacity either, only 3 will.

 

[Class 170101]

Kings cross due to gas cylinder fire on near by building site.

Sorry but just waiting for someone to burn the toast, bog standard gas leak or bust a water pipe somewhere to cause an electrical failure. All relatively small 'domestic' incidents.

 

[Tomnick]

Sorry but just waiting for someone to burn the toast, bog standard gas leak or bust a water pipe somewhere to cause an electrical failure. All relatively small 'domestic' incidents.

That can happen in any signalling location though (indeed, it's probably far less likely in a ROC with the services designed with a great deal of resilience in mind), and - as the examples above show - losing one of the current PSBs, or even just a single key part of the network, isn't going to be much less disruptive overall than losing a ROC.

 

[rugbymidland]

follow link below (October 2014 copy of The Rail Engineer)
,article entitled " National Operating Strategy Unveiled" starting on page 32 makes interesting reading (ROC Strategy, including the use of RIF(remote interface equipment etc))



http://issuu.com/railmedia/docs/tre-october-14

 

[carriageline]

Sorry but just waiting for someone to burn the toast, bog standard gas leak or bust a water pipe somewhere to cause an electrical failure. All relatively small 'domestic' incidents.

I believe the building and its fire systems are designed in such a way that if a fire starts in one part of the building then only people in that part evacuate, and if it spreads people are evacuated as they are placed at harm.

Could be wrong though! Think it's a 2 stage fire alarm system

 

[Yabbadabba]

I believe the building and its fire systems are designed in such a way that if a fire starts in one part of the building then only people in that part evacuate, and if it spreads people are evacuated as they are placed at harm.

Could be wrong though! Think it's a 2 stage fire alarm system

Yep know all about how good two stage alarms are, especially when it goes straight to stage one.

 

[ainsworth74]

You know I still don't get why so many people appear to be convinced that the implementation of ROCs is going to cause the network to grind to a halt the first time someone 'burns some toast'? Having large regional control centres is not a new thing on railways a look overseas shows it's very common. Now either those professionals are taking huge risks or they're just maybe onto something.

To be honest rather than having 12 ROCs perhaps we should take a leaf out of the Union Pacific's book. They operate 36,000 miles of track (3x the length of track in Great Britain) from one control centre. Clearly they have faith that it'll take a bit more than toast to shut them down!

 

[The Planner]

Did we not cope when old boxes closed in the 60s and moved to PSBs? Or is it just the defence of people losing jobs? Its not ever going to change and Ive no doubt the same argument will happen when we go from 12 to 1.

 

[swt_passenger]

If someone burning toast in the mess room is predicted to bring the whole route to a halt, why not move the mess room to the other side of the carpark...

 

[Tomnick]

It's perhaps a little impractical to expect the signalmen to traipse through the building, all the security features and across the car park every time they want a cup of tea or a slice of toast between breaks! It seems quite common for someone on a quieter workstation to do a regular tea round when there's a gap in activity. They'd be thoroughly stuffed if (as certainly seems to be the case in some existing establishments on a fairly regular basis) there's no meal relief man for some reason - that'd turn a minor nuisance into a proper job stopper!

 

[LowLevel]

It's perhaps a little impractical to expect the signalmen to traipse through the building, all the security features and across the car park every time they want a cup of tea or a slice of toast between breaks! It seems quite common for someone on a quieter workstation to do a regular tea round when there's a gap in activity. They'd be thoroughly stuffed if (as certainly seems to be the case in some existing establishments on a fairly regular basis) there's no meal relief man for some reason - that'd turn a minor nuisance into a proper job stopper!

Having visited a ROC it certainly did explain why we get the road so early on certain routes for certain moves - the bobby was more occupied with carrying tea around the busier workstations than signalling trains

To give NR their due the facilities were superb - head and shoulders above the PSBs let alone a Victorian shed. As a humble guard sometimes we don't even have bog roll or washing up liquid in our mess rooms and some of the furniture is literally over 100 years I strongly suspect - not like the gym that seems to be standard in any big NR installation now!

 

[racyrich]

Does anyone know, once the Upminster IECC's role is transferred to Romford this year end, what will become of the Upminster building? Will it still have a signalling role? Is it used for other railway purposes?

 

[LAX54]

You know I still don't get why so many people appear to be convinced that the implementation of ROCs is going to cause the network to grind to a halt the first time someone 'burns some toast'? Having large regional control centres is not a new thing on railways a look overseas shows it's very common. Now either those professionals are taking huge risks or they're just maybe onto something.

To be honest rather than having 12 ROCs perhaps we should take a leaf out of the Union Pacific's book. They operate 36,000 miles of track (3x the length of track in Great Britain) from one control centre. Clearly they have faith that it'll take a bit more than toast to shut them down!

ansd mere percentage of the traffic we run, plus of course on time trains are the exception rather than the rule, the line speed in most places lower, so not a like for like comparison.

Nothing wrong in theory with a ROC, but bigger is not always better.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Having visited a ROC it certainly did explain why we get the road so early on certain routes for certain moves - the bobby was more occupied with carrying tea around the busier workstations than signalling trains

To give NR their due the facilities were superb - head and shoulders above the PSBs let alone a Victorian shed. As a humble guard sometimes we don't even have bog roll or washing up liquid in our mess rooms and some of the furniture is literally over 100 years I strongly suspect - not like the gym that seems to be standard in any big NR installation now!

If it was a ROC, would not the routes be set by ARS or SARS ?

 

[carriageline]

If it was a ROC, would not the routes be set by ARS or SARS ?

Generally speaking yes.

 

[Tomnick]

Even now, I don't think our local ROC has ARS throughout. Fairly recently, certainly, it was only installed on some of the workstations.

 

[Murph]

You know I still don't get why so many people appear to be convinced that the implementation of ROCs is going to cause the network to grind to a halt the first time someone 'burns some toast'? Having large regional control centres is not a new thing on railways a look overseas shows it's very common. Now either those professionals are taking huge risks or they're just maybe onto something.

To be honest rather than having 12 ROCs perhaps we should take a leaf out of the Union Pacific's book. They operate 36,000 miles of track (3x the length of track in Great Britain) from one control centre. Clearly they have faith that it'll take a bit more than toast to shut them down!

UP might not be the best example, although never a mistake to learn from other successful, proven operations. Their network is just so different to NR's, in just about every way. Loads of miles long slow freights, huge distances with long single lines and loops (using their equivalent of RETB for the stuff miles from anywhere, I think?).

With modern technology, where the control rooms are just digital front ends onto a data network, remotely controlling the plant, the ROCs may ultimately be able to provide a higher level of resiliency in the long term. Building high availability power and data networks is old/mature technology now, if you're willing to put the investment into it. It certainly sounds like even in a disaster scenario, a single ROC going completely offline for a while should be able to be covered by the other ROCs, with only minimal disruption.

The achievable design goal should really be that it shouldn't matter if someone burns the toast, as long as they only burn it in 1 or 2 ROCs simultaneously.

 

[21C101]

Is Ryde St Johns Road still going to be a ROC?

 

[carriageline]

certainly sounds like even in a disaster scenario, a single ROC going completely offline for a while should be able to be covered by the other ROCs, with only minimal disruption.



The achievable design goal should really be that it shouldn't matter if someone burns the toast, as long as they only burn it in 1 or 2 ROCs simultaneously.

From what I have seen, none of the ROCs will be able to take over each other.

Not really knowing Ryde, I can't say for definite. The 12 are: Gillingham, Three Bridges, York, Manchester, Rugby (not the SCC!), Cardiff, Didcot, Romford, Basingstoke, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Derby

 

[LAX54]

I still cannot see another ROC taking over from a 'failed' one, and of they did, I for one would not wnat to be on a train being signalled by the 'stand in', even by ARS if fitted! or where the staff would be to work it, maybe behind a 'break glass' partition ? The thought of Three Bridges, also working Romford is quite a nightmare! Compentency in working the location is a pre-requisite, it is all very well for someone to say ROC A can work ROC B, but in reality it is a lot different.

ROC's are OK, but then it's only a name no different to PSB or IECC at the end of the day, Maybe closing smaller locations into a bigger place is a good idea, but maybe make them of a manageable area, not a quarter of the Country ! The Controllers etc I assume will all be in the same building, but they will still have to use phones to call the Signaller as all such converstions are / need to be recorded, so they could still just be as easily 50+ miles away !