Design, development, application, safety assessment and simulation of the railway signaling system

This paper on the design, development, application, safety assessment, and simulation of the railway signaling system is from the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer System Design and Operation in Railways and Other Transit Systems, held in Beijing, China, in 2010. The authors characterize the signaling system as the brain and nerves of the railway system, vital but often given little attention. There are two typical railway systems that have been standardized: the European Train Control System (ETCS) and the Chinese Train Control System (CTCS). The authors use these two systems as examples to show how the signaling systems are designed, developed, re-designed, assessed, and simulated. They emphasize that railway signaling systems must be individualized, adaptable for different lines and different rolling stock, and also fail-safe and reliable. Simulation systems are used to help model a particular signaling system to an individual railway setting. Before the application signaling system is put into operation, the task of the simulation system is to test the functions, safety, and fault-tolerant features of the application signaling system and to ensure the correct connections between the core signaling systems based on the database of the application line.