Luminate on Western
366 days after signing the contract, the first Integrated TM system on GB Mainline Railway has been commissioned. The Luminate digital Traffic Management System went live today on the Great Western Mainline, helping to control trains between London Paddington and Bristol. Luminate is in use at both the Operations Control Centre in Swindon and the Signalling Control Centre at TVSC, Didcot. The system is fully integrated with the Scalable signalling control systems at TVSC; enabling new plans and schedules to be seamlessly implemented.
Luminate was in use almost immediately; the 08.27 Paddington to Penzance (train 1C76) left Paddington 9 minutes late and was following the 08.33 Paddington to Swansea (train 1B15). The Platform Docker tool was used to re-route 1C76 from Platform 9 into Platform 8 for a quicker transition through the Reading Station area. The platform change was made, and the signalling control system’s Automatic Route Setting (ARS) automatically re-routed accordingly. Due to the intervention the Penzance train made its stop at Westbury back on time.
This delivery is a result of collaboration between Digital Railway, the Western Route, and Resonate, and could not have happened without the support of many other parties of Network Rail who were part of the wider project team; Route Services IT, Telecoms, Training and Ergonomics.
Luminate TMS on the Western Route is able to forecast train movements, identify conflicts, re-plan train schedules, enable changes to platform occupation, and supports the management of possessions and restrictions; such as Temporary Speed Restrictions. On its first day of operation Luminate was used over 300 times for successful interventions by the trained operators.