Argentina’s state-owned rail operator Trenes Argentinos Cargas has inaugurated a new Traffic Control Center that allows it to monitor in real time the position and speed of its trains over three railway lines, as well as authorize the circulation and activate the automatic braking system in case of an emergency.
The project was conducted by Trenes Argentinos Cargas with technology developed by Alta Rail Technology, a Latin-American company with headquarters in Brazil.
The three railway lines served by the Traffic Control Center run 17 Argentine provinces, with over 9,000 km of tracks. Under the project, 200 locomotives was equipped with the new systems. In the past, this structure worked with old, expensive satellite communication systems or depended on the use mobile phone calls to train drivers in order to inform the train’s position to the Command Center – a system susceptible to signal or communication failures.
The TCS solution also include the installation of an onboard equipment set in the locomotives allowing the communication between the train driver and the Operational Control Center, through a digital network combining communication channels using mobile telephony and satellite.
In addition to calculating train positions in real time, such devices allow recording information on behavior profiles of train drivers and protecting trains in cases of excessive speed or train’s entrance into unauthorized segments.
“The new technology is a benefit not only for train drivers and monitoring operators, but also for all the other areas of the company, which will, for the first time, count with train operation statistics to increasingly improve cargo transport quality,” Ezequiel Lemos, Trenes Argentinos Cargas CEO, said.
The project is part of Government’s rail network modernisation plan that is estimated at USD 14 billion up to 2023.
“This system is part of our commitment to reactivate the freight railways, after decades of divestitures, and we are also taking it forward by redeveloping 1,600 km of tracks to benefit the northern Argentine provinces and reactivate the regional economies,” said Transport Minister Guillermo Dietrich.
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