On November 15, the Level-I overhaul work for the signal interlocking equipment of Yanzhoubei Railway Station under the administration of China Railway Jinan Group was successfully completed. As the signaling system supplier for this project, CASCO provided Yanzhoubei Railway Station with the CTC3.0 system, and set up a centralized control terminal in the station’s Complex Building to help the station upgrade its "smart brain".

As the second largest freight station in Shandong Province, Yanzhoubei Railway Station is the central hub of railway freight transport in southwestern Shandong. It mainly handles train marshalling, disintegration, and remarshalling of freight trains headed to Jinan, Xuzhou, Heze and Rizhao, as well as freight transport, military supplies transport, loading and unloading, arrival and departure, meeting and switching of trains, shouldering tremendous dispatching and commanding tasks.

Computer interlocking, centralized traffic control, centralized signal monitoring, section integrated controlling, smart power screen, coding, and ZPW-2000 systems have been added to the indoor equipment in the interlocking equipment overhaul project at Yanzhoubei. According to the type and operational characteristics of Yanzhoubei, CASCO applied a number of innovations in the station subsystem based on the standard centralized traffic control system.

Flexible allocation of area management authority

Usually, the signal control range of centralized control and interlocking is consistent. Yanzhoubei has a unique design for historical reasons, and the interlocking was specially designed for the signal division of each area, and could not fully realize the objectives of the station's post management and division of labor. To this end, CASCO developed a double-layer authority interaction technology for the CTC system between the train management area and the signal control area, thus realizing a flexible allocation of authorities between them.

Dispatching Hall of Yanzhoubei Complex Building

CTC Cabinet of Yanzhoubei Complex Building

Refined management of train operation schedule

Yanzhoubei is under the common control of the four dispatching stations and accepts the overall scheduling and arrangement instructions issued by each station. After this signaling system transformation, the CTC system can identify and merge schedules based on factors such as train type, direction of travel, and destination; further realize the dynamic allocation of train operation schedules based on the train operation in each depot according to the distribution of depots; and finally automatically calculate the depot and station arrival time according to the actual operation of trains, realizing a closed information loop for train dispatching management.

Multi-post collaboration for in-station dispatching

Based on the CTC system, information sharing and business linkage are realized in the station among train organization, train dispatching and maintenance positions, including signalman, watchman, station dispatcher and office assistant, covering the entire process of schedule signing, preparation, adjustment, approval, issue and execution, and realizing integrated management and control of train receiving, dispatching and shunting operations in the station.

Remote replacement of software by CTC Center and construction site of Yanzhoubei Railway Station

During the construction period, the epidemic broke out in Yanzhou. Facing the difficult conditions of obstructed traffic and shortage of living supplies, the project team rose to the challenge and always worked on the front line, fully testing and verifying the functions of the CTC system, carefully creating an integrated system for station-level traffic operation management and signal control, empowering the Yanzhoubei railway transport hub with technology, and providing a strong guarantee for the efficient operation and a significant increase in transportation capacity of the local railway freight network.

Project team from the party members of the 5th Party Branch