For railway transport, depots play a vital role in the safety of operations and their efficiency enables the operation of a well-maintained rolling stock ready to meet traffic safety and comfort demands.
Continuous growth of demand for railway services and the change of rolling stock profile, as a consequence of railway modernisation, changes depot requirements. As railway traffic increases, it is obvious that the rolling stock fleet extends to meet estimated growth triggering a higher demand regarding the capacity and availability of depots. Over the past years, the infrastructure of depots has been changed with positive impact on safety. An efficient lighting system, communications systems, access routes, well-integrated signals, all help increase safety.
A modern depot should operate with minimum staff and maximum automation. Operations should not be carried out just in one central location, but in some cases, inside the depot. The entire operation control system has to be designed so that the staff would easily recognize and solve problems with the help of the technological systems. It also has to have the possibility to convey information and errors to another location. The planning and optimisation of the rolling stock installation process and the information on necessary infrastructure are important elements that need to be approached within the operations carried out in the depot.
One of the essential requirements is the gradual implementation of centralising modern operations and technologies in order to increase the efficiency of a depot. The management processes regarding the entire operations chain has to be optimised to reduce the execution time of operations and to exploit modern technology in order to reduce maintenance time, minimise failures and maximise availability.
The control of operations is managed through different devices and systems, each managed, most of the time, by independent (separate) platforms. In this context, an integrated system to manage all technologies and subsystems is necessary in order to help the staff get a general picture of operations and to answer rapidly to situations that require the adoption of essential decisions.
Thus, management systems and their integration optimise the operation process, reduces to minimum the possibility of human error, while increasing the efficiency and reducing operation costs.
As the features of modern rolling stock will influence the development of depots, they have to be equipped with new-generation technological systems that would ensure the execution of operations efficiently and rapidly.
by Pamela Luică
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