“TRACK has a memory,” says Mr Brian Monakali, chairman of the International Heavy Haul Association’s (IHHA) strategy committee. “Track will never forget what you’ve done to it. If you neglect to do maintenance, you postpone the maintenance, you cut the budget for maintenance, it will remind you many years later what you did and when it reminds you, it is very, very bad.”
Monakali was speaking during the opening ceremony of the IHHA 2023 conference in Rio de Janeiro, launching the association’s Heavy Haul Vision 2030 (HHV2030), which outlines the challenges and opportunities that the fourth industrial revolution will present for the heavy-haul sector in the coming years.
“We are here today to launch the Vision 2030 so that we don’t get reminded by the railway line in years to come that you never thought about the future,” says Monakali, who is also IHHA vice-chairman, and director of energy and logistics strategy at Australian mining company South32. He previously worked for Transnet, South Africa.
The heavy-haul sector has already made major improvements over the past four decades, pioneering developments and implementing cutting-edge technologies and innovations that have improved safety, operational efficiency and customer experience.
These include moving bulk commodities such as coal and iron ore in longer and heavier trains using distributed power; stricter maintenance and operating practices; advanced safety management systems such as rail stress management; electronically-controlled pneumatic (ECP) braking; and better management of the wheel-rail interface.
The study resulting in HHV2030 was launched following the IHHA conference in Cape Town in 2017, when a benchmark survey found that respondents expected the approaching fourth industrial revolution to be characterised by the adoption of cloud computing, 3D printing, big data and the Internet of Things (IoT). This was followed by the 2019 IHHA conference in Narvik, Norway, which again explored the implications of Rail 4.0.
In the lead up to the Narvik conference, IHHA held a strategy workshop in Luleå, Sweden, to consider its vision for heavy-haul in 2030. Those attending expected heavy-haul-railways to deal with higher tonnages in the future by unlocking capacity through the use of virtual moving block signalling, aided by communications-based train control (CBTC). They foresaw trains running autonomously at tighter headways, dispatched and guided by computers analysing considerable amounts of data in real time. Track and rolling stock inspection would be performed by onboard and wayside sensors feeding artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms capable of identifying trends in equipment conditions that would enable predictive and condition-based maintenance.
This would result in higher tonnage throughput on existing infrastructure, reducing longer-term capital requirements. The heavy-haul Railway of the Future is seen as a digitally-driven lean production line that is fully integrated with the commodity supply chain and its needs, with trains operated on demand in pre-planned paths.
This is an ambitious vision that will require significant work to be successfully implemented, but one that the HHV2030 study says is achievable. “The Railway of the Future was not seen as an abstract concept as many railways and suppliers are already actively on this trajectory,” the study says. “Railways will need to profoundly change to remain viable in the fourth industrial revolution. But conversion to automated operation and computer-controlled traffic flows could well spell a rail renaissance.”
So how can this be achieved? The study sets out a timeline that railways should follow, although it is dependent on the corresponding advancement of technology.
Within the first two years, heavy-haul railways should concentrate on modernising their core systems to improve resource and asset scheduling. This would involve standardisation, modularisation and integration with supply chain partners.
Two to five years out, train operation should be incrementally automated to improve efficiency and reduce cost. Automation would be paced to align with organisational and technological maturity, including communications capabilities and the development of the IoT network. Predictive preventive maintenance algorithms would be further developed.
Five to 10 years into the conversion to the digital railway, digitised network control should be integrated with signalling to leverage algorithms that optimise performance and throughput capacity. This would be further developed 10 years into the future through AI learning on traffic-flow optimisation.
Data and information
A major requirement will be the collection of ever-increasing amounts of data to allow the creation of algorithms to spot patterns and predict emerging situations. Research into technology able to transfer high volumes of data over long distances, as well as large storage capacity, will be necessary, to allow real-time information to be processed and transmitted.
Government action to encourage research, technology development and asset investment needs to be guaranteed, alongside investment in electricity generation infrastructure in order to provide a large volume at low cost.
Loading, unloading, holding and marshalling yards need to be highly efficient to ensure that occupancy follows a rhythmic and consistent pattern, and that track capacity is maximised.
Finally, for trains to increase in size, their component materials must have consistently high load capacity, strength and durability. This will require research in fields such as materials as well as electrical, civil and mechanical engineering, increasing the load capacity of both track and trains.
Not all of this can be achieved at once, and the study says railways must focus on their key assets, resource optimisation and asset management. Industry leaders will need to manage the transition to the autonomous railway, deciding which aspects of operations to target, developing and deploying the necessary roadmaps, and perhaps most critically, seeking to secure the staff and resources required.
The study says that not all of the wins from technology will be immediately obvious, and railways must aim to achieve a state of “ongoing development and direction,” more akin to a software supplier constantly evolving a product rather than delivering a single major construction project. Heavy-haul railways are also encouraged to “pay attention to data - who owns it, who controls it, and how it comes together.” Managers must also think about protocols and processes for when failure occurs.
To support the management and operation of autonomous technologies, information systems will need to be robust and fail-safe. They will also need to progressively integrate legacy applications and new technology within a holistic computing architecture that includes data warehousing.
“Railway braking systems are a current constraint and a future opportunity for much bigger and faster trains.”
The potential for cyber attacks has risen, which can cause traffic disruption, degraded operation and even safety risks. The challenge here is to create a culture of awareness and defence measures similar to the way that safety culture has been cultivated. An industry-wide approach is needed to develop robust autonomous systems and recovery strategies, facilitated by stronger institutions driving collaboration, standardisation and productivity improvements across the industry.
The adoption of CBTC and positive train control (PTC) has also forced railways to take a fresh look at their data management architecture, and the need for assets to be precisely located and identified, and for all train data to align consistently across cross-functional databases, has helped to break down some data silos.
Freight tonnages are expected to rise around the world in the coming decade, and new construction alone is unlikely to provide the additional capacity needed. Railways will instead need to deploy efficiency levers more than usual. Optimisation and density will be key, achieved through a combination of linear density, axleload, train speed and network stability improvements.
The study says that heavy-haul railways have in the past concentrated their research on increasing capacity through running longer, heavier and more reliable trains, which has resulted in large trains with high axleloads and good reliability, but with low commercial speeds. However, the study points out that passenger and conventional rail freight operators have increased capacity by focusing on increasing average speed and using technology to operate trains at shorter headways, which would require a significant improvement in braking technology to be replicated in heavy-haul railways.
“Railway braking systems are a current constraint and a future opportunity for much bigger and faster trains,” the study says.
The improvement of communication systems will also allow trains with increasingly distributed traction and will also increase the collection and exchange of information between the trains themselves, ensuring safety and reducing headways to ensure optimal operation. As the number of stops decrease, average speed will also progressively increase, further increasing capacity.
Heavy-haul railways have seen a steady year-on-year decline in the total number of derailments they experience in spite of the increasing tonnages carried, and the study says this has been driven in part by significant improvements in rolling stock and track condition monitoring.
“The challenge begins with considering the customer, not the organisation, as the centre of the exercise.”
However, the rate of derailments due to human factors has plateaued over the past decade. While digital technologies and automation are increasing the amount of available data and analysis that is undertaken, it also increases the complexity and cognitive workload of operating a train or railway.
To combat this, the digital railway may require changing skillsets at the same time as the workforce may be ageing. The study says it must be considered whether additional safety technologies are simplifying and replacing safety controls, or adding new, additional layers of confusion.
To manage this, the rail industry needs to move away from soft administrative controls such as procedures and rules and to invest in the research and development necessary to engineer, automate, and eliminate exposure to risk, designing for safety under a systems approach.
Functional safety and complex control systems engineering will be critical to everyday operation. This will require a willingness to change and improve and will require collaboration between rail operators and research institutions, vendors and regulators.
Many significant advances in safety have been delivered with proven technology, so the challenge now is increasing the rate of upgrades and technology adoption across the heavy-haul rail industry globally. Full train automation to remove the need for drivers and the use of safety integrity level (SIL)-rated safety controls to manage current human decision-making on signalling and train movements is now proven technology that could be adopted across the industry.
A major factor in achieving this shift is caring for and manging staff through the transition. New skills and experience will be needed, analytics and practical knowledge will need to merge, and the human-machine interfaces will need to be understood by employees.
The study says that managers and supervisors will need to change from “doing work” to “managing exceptions” and “managing assets”, overseeing decision-support systems and predictive modelling. They will have to occasionally intervene in automated processes to manage exceptions, and then undertake recovery to restore automated processes. The supply chain will be integrated, and people will be expected to work as teams overseeing cross-functional information.
The way customer service is provided for everyday consumers is changing, for example with the ability to order goods for next-day delivery and to track the shipment to your front door. The study says industrial customers are now starting to demand a similar level of service from rail freight operators. This includes updates via messenger services such as WhatsApp, and access to real-time information via a range of different mobile touchpoints.
The study says the challenge begins with considering the customer, not the organisation, as the centre of the exercise. This requires a vision of customer experience based on mobilising, organising and committing all employees on a top-down basis to customer needs.
There will also be the need to shape customer interactions into different sequences by digitising processes and getting different channels to interact with one another. This is especially true for large, established organisations that have not integrated operational silos across sales, maintenance, and operations.
Future expectations
When all this has been achieved, there will still be room for improvement, and the study concludes by considering what the railway may look like in the long term. It is hoped operation will be optimised using blockchain to ensure safety, while the evolution of data and processing systems will allow trains to make decisions well in advance based on the entire ecosystem that surrounds the train. Integrated operations centres will become increasingly common, even though trains will make many decisions onboard using embedded AI algorithms.
Wagons are expected to be larger, more aerodynamic, lighter and made from more efficient materials, allowing an increase in train speed, a smoother ride and, consequently, bigger trains. The locomotives of the future will be mostly electric, with diesel-electric locomotives with ac drives or locomotives powered by LNG gas turbines replacing the few remaining diesel-electric locomotives with dc traction motors. This will enable the locomotive fleet to tackle steeper gradients and haul longer trains while providing better energy efficiency.
Trains will be hauled mostly using distributed traction, but with increased distance between locomotives while computers will manage communications and shocks within the train as well as forces acting on the rail.
This is an optimistic scenario, and one that will take a great deal of work to achieve. But first, the heavy-haul railways of the world must implement their ambitious, but achievable, Vision 2030.
