– RailCOMPLETE provides a high degree of automation and streamlining of processes. In many areas, the program helps to save time, says experienced senior engineer Knut Atle Stene Andersen at Norconsult.  

– With RailCOMPLETE as the central repository for the data, and with the programming of the tables in RailCOMPLETE, the quality has improved compared to the more manual work processes we used to do. But most importantly, the time it takes to produce drawings has gone down significantly, says senior engineer Stene Andersen.  

Tight deadlines and strict rules

Knut Atle Stene Andersen has been working with overhead contact lines and railway since 1993. In 2010 he started with the project management of such installations and has since then participated in several large projects in connection with the electrification and upgrading of the Norwegian railway. These days he is central in the work on the drawings for the electrification of the Trønder and Meråker railway, assignment “ETM”.  

This assignment is carried out as a subcontractor to NRC, which has a turnkey contract for Bane NOR. The section of railway line from Trondheim with the Tyholt tunnel and further east is approximately 120 km with single track and a dozen stations. The contract extends from Marienborg via Stavne-Leangbanen and from Trondheim station to Stjørdal station on the Nordlandsbanen, and from Hell station to Riksgrensen on the Meråkerbanen. There are no contact lines from before, and the railway line is characterized by many and sharp curves.  

– The project must be completed by November 2023. These are tight deadlines and strict regulations. RailCOMPLETE contributes to good implementation, says Stene Andersen.  

Saves a lot of time and reduces the possibility of errors

Stene Andersen and his colleagues at Norconsult are working on this extensive project. He checks wiring, equipment placement and dimensioning in accordance with Bane NOR’s extensive technical regulations, and that drawings and tables have the correct appearance and content. There are several hundred drawings in the project, both line drawings in scale 1:500 and 1:1000 for contact line installations, and there are earthing plans in scale. All drawings contain tables with hundreds of figures which of course must be correct.  

During the project, and once it is built, thousands of engineered objects must be reported to Bane NOR’s system for monitoring construction projects, and finally key data must be transferred to Bane NOR’s operational database, “Banedata”.  

In this assignment, foundation plans are not stored as drawings, instead, the XYZ object placement coordinates from RailCOMPLETE are transferred to NRC as data files. There are also no 3D models in this mission.  

-There are many processes and many possible sources of error in such a project. RailCOMPLETE contributes to an increased degree of automation and efficiency of the processes. But although it saves us time and reduces the risk of errors, it still requires considerable expertise to drive such a project forward, says Stene Andersen.  

Today we are making Norwegian Railway History – RailCOMPLETE is now capable of modeling tracks, switches, track vacancy detection sections, signal, via points and fictitious end points, and figures out the complex signaling system’s socalled interlocking tables by itself. These are detailed tables which describe the required state for switches and track sections in order to allow a certain train route or shunting route to be set and the corresponding signals be set to ‘clear’.

This far we have developed support for generating train routes, shunting routes, extended train routes and extended shunting routes. The RailCOMPLETE development team now aims at producing all 20 interlocking table types according to the Norwegian Bane NORs design guidelines “Veileder for forriglingstabeller”.

The interlocking tables may be generated from a schematic as well as from a geographic RailCOMPLETE model.

Below you will find a fictitious railway station. The corresponding interlocking tables may be downloaded here.

Tired of spending countless hours of checking your railway drawings?

We are proud to announce that RailCOMPLETE objects now compute their own local model checks. Each time an object is used, refreshed or inspected, its model checks are re-evaluated. Model checking automates the tedious process of finding small and large inconsistencies in your model, or between your model and other discipline’s models.

In the example below (*) we have defined Error, Warning and OK distance intervals between neighboring balises in the up and down directions measured along the track. We have also introduced distance checks against balises in flyover tracks or in adjacent tracks. Looking for all objects with a problem is easily done from the Object Manager, in order to review and fix your model before delivery.

(*) ATC for the Bane NOR national rail administration, Norway.

The Manage Properties window shows this…

…when the AutoCAD modelspace shows this: