Working with Network Rail to protect and maintain critical signalling application
For over a decade Zircon have been a partner for Network Rail providing ongoing maintenance and support of the National Standardisation of Route Lists (NSRL) application. During this time Zircon have played a pivotal role in helping Network Rail navigate modernisation challenges and preparing for the introduction of technologies such as the European Train Control System (ETCS).
The importance of NSRL for the UK Rail Network
To create routes within a signalling area on any part of the UK rail network there is a safety requirement to generate a card for each route. The reason being that if the signalling system were to ever fail completely; these cards carry the instructions on what is required for a train to complete the route, for instance what position each set of points need to be in.
NSRL is the application that signalling engineers and designers must use to standardise the production of these route cards.
The creation of a route is not solely in the laying of new track, it also encompasses alterations to existing routes or the creation of new routes through existing track layouts. So, although there may not necessarily be a daily requirement for the application it is a vitally important system for the long-term operation and safety of the UK rail network.
Limited Licensing = Limited Availability or Incur Significant Expense
At the very start of our relationship with Network Rail, the NSRL system used a proprietary CAD application to create route cards. For employees of Network Rail who had access to licences for the CAD application this posed no issue, however for third parties that also required access to the NSRL application this presented a problem. Either have no access to the NSRL application (not a viable option) or pay the licensing cost to be able to access the system.
To provide third parties with the means to use the NSRL application Network Rail needed an alternative to the CAD application that would be intuitive to use and widely accessible.
The solution – Utilise an application that has a much broader reach
As the focus of the work was to increase the tool’s availability, the obvious solution was to find an alternative that would be the most broadly available to both Network Rail who still needed access to the tool and all the third-party stakeholders.
Given the almost default availability of Microsoft Office amongst most businesses it was deemed a sensible choice to make use of this and create an alternative application that would use Microsoft Word to output the Route Card PDF’s.
Via an Oracle APEX front end NSRL users can enter the required data, the output of which is an exported XML document. From this point, through Word VBA scripts, this is then rendered to PDF Route Cards.
Through the provision of the Oracle and Word-based alternative Network Rail has been able to save not only the cost of licencing the CAD application for third party stakeholders but also on the provision of licenses internally. Several members of Network Rail staff were given access to licences for the CAD application despite not having a need for it. Removing the need for the licence meant removing these expenses as well.
Modernisation and the introduction of ETCS
The growing introduction of the European Train Control System (ETCS) introduced a complication to the NSRL application. A key difference between ETCS and current systems is that current systems require routes to be determined from signal to signal whereas ETCS routes can be defined from and to marker boards.
As the NSRL application was created with the current signalling format in mind it did not have the correct set up to allow for the definition of routes using the ETCS system format. However, as ETCS does not apply to 100% of the rail network it was important to maintain support for the existing signalling format.
To avoid making major changes to the layout of the Oracle APEX user interface, the storage database, the XML export and the PDF card, additional drop-down boxes were added that allowed the definition as to whether entrance and exits would be signals, block markers or location markers. This selection would filter down through the process and produce altered Route Cards that would clearly state the type of entrance and exit.
A relationship to span decades
Since the very first project in 2012, Zircon has continuously provided support for the NSRL application. Without the resources required to undertake this work in house, Network Rail continue to place their trust in Zircon to keep this vital application running.
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