Where HERMES is used
HERMES has been in use across the UK and Europe, assisting with the design, implementation and validation of new railway systems and concepts. A selection of some of the most recent projects HERMES and the Rail Team at Graffica have been involved in are:
Digital Railway Outline Business Case
HERMES was selected to produce the modelling required for the Digital Railway Outline Business Case. The Digital Railway is a UK government initiative, headed by Network Rail to boost capacity on the Railway through better utilisation of digital technologies. Graffica built two models for the business case; The East Coast Mainline between London and Berwick Upon Tweed and the Great Eastern Mainline between London Liverpool Street and Norwich. Both models ran scenarios representing conventional signalling using today's timetable (the baseline) before applying ETCS Levels 2 and 3. Timetables were generated from high level specifications, defining service frequency and stopping patterns for 2023 and 2043, utilising a conflict-free timetabling algorithm to generate the service schedules. A Traffic Management system developed in house at Graffica, loosely based on ARS (Automatic Route Setting) that could re-order and re-route trains across junctions, was also applied to handle scenarios with both small and large perturbations.
Graffica was able to demonstrate on these two networks that additional capacity could be gained by applying these technologies, with HERMES producing data used to illustrate the business case. The ETCS Level 3 simulation is pioneering; HERMES has been used to prove some of the underlying concepts, despite the level 3 specification not being fully finalised. This has lead to a flexible and variable internal model capable of supporting multiple variations of ETCS in line with the SRS version 3.6.0 including concepts such as vanilla Level 2, optimised Level 2, Level 3 Virtual Block and Level 3 Moving Block. Graffica are also prototyping variations of Level 3 Moving Block, exploring future possibilities and integrations between the interlocking and ETCS systems.
ETCS Level 3 Simulation around Doncaster with 2043 Timetable
Thameslink Traffic Management System
HERMES has been used to evaluate the effects of traffic management on delays between St Pancras and Blackfriars, and adjacent suburban networks after the expansion of services to 24 trains per hour in each direction. The first phase of the work examined the effect of applying a speed restriction on a conflicting train to avoid the conflict. The results provided insights for the Thameslink team as to how delay propagated through the bottleneck and onto adjacent networks, and how the effectiveness of a potential traffic management solution could improve traffic flow. The second phase of the work focused on identifying and resolving future conflicts between trains, replicating the future TTMS system. This functionality will be used to determine how the new system may affect signaller workload and performance
ATSS Conflict Resolver
GSM-R Capacity Modelling
HERMES was used to model capacity for GSM-R telecommunication cells on the East Coast and Great Western Mainlines. Cells were placed on the models at mileages specified by the customer and a future timetable run. HERMES logged the numbers of trains in each cell during the run, highlighting where large numbers of trains require simultaneous connection to a GSM-R cell. Infill work was completed to adjust the layout of the cells, with new cells added to create more network capacity at bottlenecks and cells removed where there was excess capacity. All modelling work was done using trains running under ETCS Level 2. Further information and demonstration can be seen in the video below:
ETCS Modelling
HERMES has been used to model ETCS Level 2 and its effects on the network in a variety of ways. One of the largest areas of work has been the modelling of the ETCS national values and their effect on freight services. Work modelling heavy stone trains at Acton on the Great Western mainline along with engineering trains on the Cambrian Line in Wales (Currently the only ETCS L2 operational line in the UK) was conducted. Along with this process HERMES performance was validated against real OTMR (On Train Monitoring Recorder) data where HERMES was found to produce an accurate simulation of the real world.
European FP7 On-Time Project
One of the largest projects HERMES has supported to date. HERMES was provided to a number of Infrastructure Managers and research institutions across Europe. Utilising it's API our partners were able to hook into HERMES and inject their own Traffic Management and timetabling algorithms enabling HERMES to assist with their validation during large scale disruptions. The HERMES on-time work was then demonstrated at the Innotrans exihibition in Berlin in September 2014.
