With the new year around the corner, China's railway network once again ushered in the intensive opening of railway lines. CASCO, China’s leading integrator of rail transit control systems, has supported 10 national railway lines, including Beijing-Shenyang passenger dedicated line (Liaoning section), Tongliao-Xinmin passenger dedicated line, Harbin-Mudanjiang high-speed railway, Jinan-Qingdao high-speed railway, Qingdao-Lianyungang railway, Lianyungang-Yancheng railway, Hangzhou-Huangshan high-speed railway, Nanping-Sanming-Longyan railway, Huaihua-Shaoyang-Hengyang railway and Guangzhou-Meizhou-Shantou passenger dedicated line (Longhu South-Shantou section), and has completed the signaling renovation of multiple hubs.

The 10 national railway lines stretch from north to south across the northernmost and southernmost parts of the Chinese mainland. Harbin-Mudanjiang high-speed railway, the northernmost horizontal railway of the “eight vertical and eight horizontal high-speed railway network”, is the second line with CTC 3.0 system in Harbin Railway Bureau and is adopted with CASCO’s computer interlocking system (iLOCK) for the whole line, which will reduce the original 5-hour journey to less than 2 hours, assist the “One Goal, Two Modes” economic layout of Heilongjiang Province and promote the transformation of Heilongjiang from a geographical center of northeast Asia into a logistics hub. Prior to this, CASCO has provided CTC 3.0 and iLOCK systems for Harbin-Jiamusi PDL, which is also affiliated with Harbin Railway Bureau.

In addition, the Beijing-Shenyang passenger dedicated line (Liaoning section) and Beijing-Shenyang hub across north and northeast China has officially gone into operation at the end of the year. Tongliao-Xinmin PDL, coming from Xinmin North Station of Beijing-Shenyang line and connecting Liaoning and Inner Mongolia ,was also put into operation at the same time, which helps optimizing the layout of the high-speed passenger transportation network in northeast China.

In East China, the simultaneous opening of Jinan-Qingdao high-speed railway, Qingdao-Lianyungang railway and Lianyungang-Yancheng railway will take the two core cities – Jinan and Qingdao as the hubs and form a golden transport line across Shandong Province, connecting Shijiazhuang-Jinan and Shijiazhuang-Taiyuan PDLs in the west, and the Yancheng-Nantong and Shanghai-Nantong railways in the east. This will accelerate the construction of the "two-hour economic circle" of Shandong Province and comprehensively upgrade Shandong’s role as a transportation hub and its linkage capability with surrounding provinces and cities such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region, the Yangtze River Delta and the central plains city group.

Qingdao-Lianyungang railway dispatching station

Hangzhou-Huangshan high-speed railway, put into operation the same time as Lianyungang-Yancheng railway, is one of the first CTC 3.0 lines of Shanghai Railway Bureau. It passes through Hangzhou, the Thousand-Island Lake, Mount Huang and other scenic spots, and will open up a world-class “Most Beautiful High-Speed Railway” for tourism in 2019. After the commissioning, the whole journey will take only 90 minutes at the soonest, and the fastest journey from places such as Shanghai, Ningbo and Nanjing to Mount Huang will be about 120 minutes.

Nanping-Sanming-Longyan railway, connecting Nanping, Sanming and Longyan in Fujian Province, was also put into operation at the end of the year to improve the traffic conditions of northern, central and western Fujian Province and promote the social and economic development of areas along the railway. CASCO provided the centralized traffic control system (CTC) and computer interlocking system (iLOCK), and realized the breakthrough of "zero" in interlocking system on the whole line in Nanchang Railway Bureau.

In Central and South China, Huaihua-Shaoyang-Hengyang Railway and Guangzhou-Meizhou-Shantou PDL (South Longhu -Shantou section) will also carry passengers in the new year. Huaihua-Shaoyang-Hengyang Railway from Huaihua South Station of Shanghai-Kunming high-speed railway leads to Hengyang hub in the east, realizing the connection with Beijing-Guangzhou railway, Shanghai-Kunming high-speed railway and Hengyang-Chaling-Ji’an railway, forming the "golden triangle" of Hunan high-speed railway network. After the operation, it will only take 1.8 hours to cross Huaihua, Shaoyang and Hengyang, and will effectively fill the gaps in the railway network in many counties and cities in western Hunan, and promote regional economic vitality.

Huaihua-Shaoyang-Hengyang Railway dispatching station

Among the signaling control systems installed in these lines and stations, there is the leading FZk-CTC 3.0 centralized traffic control system in the industry, which is of independent intellectual property rights.

CTC3.0 cabinets

Since December 2015, when CASCO FZk-CTC 3.0 system was first applied in Qingbaishi Station of Lanzhou Railway Bureau, marking a precedent for China Railway, it has been widely used in newly operated railway lines. Among the 10 national railway lines delivered this time, the coverage of FZk-CTC 3.0 system has reached 100%. Compared with the traditional CTC 2.0 and TDCS 3.0 centralized traffic control systems, FZk-CTC 3.0 has significant advantages in system performance, safety, adaptability and stability.

• Better performance：adopting intelligent distributed autonomy design principle, it intelligently integrates multiple subsystems such as train operation, operation and maintenance, query, simulation and emergency, extending the system connotation and building a big data platform to provide train operation information maintenance means for different disciplines. Meanwhile, the station server is newly added and a new generation of industrial-level autonomous machine is adopted, with a higher customized system and professional hardware. The performance of key equipment is more than doubled, and the response speed is faster.

• Higher safety：the transformation from monitoring to prevention and control, from human control to machine control is realized, improving the safety capability of equipment; safety control of operation flow is realized, improving the management control capability of operation process; modern dispatching control and command is adopted, reducing the labor intensity of operation personnel. With the simultaneous implementation of three approaches, the safety and efficiency of train operation are upgraded comprehensively.

• Higher adaptability：it is not only widely used in high-speed railways, but also applicable to normal-speed railways. Ample train plans and innovative route setting methods can better adapt to complicated hubs and multi-direction trains.

• Better stability：redundant dual network is fully used to realize two-way transmission of operational application, with added process supervision and safety control of train operation. The integrated maintenance platform (operation and maintenance subsystem) is like an “online diagnostician”, providing 7*24 uninterrupted technical support for the system; the query subsystem is of clear division of work, so that the production system is more focused on dispatching and command; the emergency subsystem can quickly restore system operation in case of core equipment failure.

The intensive operation of these lines will greatly improve China's "eight vertical and eight horizontal high-speed railway network" and other regional network layout, not only opening up the "main artery", but also enriching the "capillary", to provide all-around technical and safety support for the upcoming travelling in the winter vacation and Spring Festival. Simultaneous commencement and delivery of multiple projects has once again verified the excellent capability of CASCO.

As the only “National Technology Innovation Demonstration Enterprise” in rail transit industry in China, CASCO always regards technological innovation and breakthrough as the core guarantee of train operation safety, providing all-round protection for passengers and providing customers with services for the whole life cycle. CASCO's track record in the railway industry has covered 18 railway bureaus in China, nearly 100 PDLs and high-speed railways. CASCO has participated many times in the formulation of national standards for related systems and also has gone global. CASCO’s CTC currently is the centralized traffic control system with the highest market share in China and has become the standard of China Railway. CASCO’s TDCS has achieved full coverage of existing lines in more than 10 railway bureaus, leading in market share and operational stability.