National Railway Signaling Project

Thanks to the National Railway Signaling Project (UDSP), which was developed for TCDD in partnership with ITU-TUBITAK using HIMA Safety PLCs brought to Turkey by Net Engineering, our country gets rid of black box solutions that are taken as turnkey from abroad.

The National Railway Signaling Project (UDSP) is a very important and serious work and thanks to the project, the country's foreign dependence on this issue will be eliminated as well as a significant reduction in the meaning of the cost of the Net Engineering Automation A.Ş. General Manager Alper Güçlü, told us about how they started projects in the railway sector, the gains that will be achieved with the UDSP project developed without being dependent on foreign countries, and the applications that the firm supports.

Alper Güçlü said that his studies on railway signaling in Turkey started in 2009 with the National Railway Signaling Project (UDSP) developed by Istanbul Technical University and TUBITAK for the end user TCDD, and said: It was to ensure that TCDD had its own domestic system. As Net Mühendislik Automation, we have tried to contribute to the supply and support of HIMA Safety PLC products, of which we are the Turkey representative, by informing as much as we can with Germany. Academicians at Technical University and engineers at TUBITAK, one of the project partners, decided to use HIMA Safety PLC systems in the project after an intensive research and evaluation process. Both institutions developed independent software from each other and produced the most suitable domestic software for TCDD requirements. Afterwards, site installations, commissioning and factory acceptance tests were carried out without any problems at Adapazarı Mithatpaşa station, which was envisaged as a pilot project. After the domestic system was tested at the Mithatpaşa station for 15 months, the installation was started on the Aydın Denizli line upon the request of the Minister of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications Binali Yıldırım and the instruction of TCDD General Manager Süleyman Kahraman. In addition, field studies were carried out for the Afyon-Isparta-Denizli line and work was started.

A VERY IMPORTANT AND SERIOUS PROJECT

“With this project, the country's foreign dependency on this issue will be eliminated, and a significant decrease will be achieved in terms of cost.” Güçlü said, “When I say cost, I am talking about both money and time costs. We are left alone with black box solutions because they do these works from abroad to us. Since there is no problem in the systems after the operation, we are unable to continue the operation safely as we cannot make any intervention. In order to solve the problem, we are obliged to receive service from abroad, whenever foreign companies give us a date, we have to wait for that date and we pay very serious money for this. Likewise, we are faced with the same problems when it comes to existing or any expansion. However, thanks to the developed local signaling system, interventions can be made in accordance with the desired program thanks to the trained local workforce. When the lines with a local signaling system are installed in the future, it can be easily commissioned by Turkish engineers by adding PLC modules containing additional I / O numbers calculated.

At this point, Mr. Alper shared the cost calculation in the article written by TCDD Facilities Department Head Mehmet Turşak in the Kardelen Magazine published by TCDD in order to better explain the financial dimension of the event: While it will be approximately 165 million TL, this cost decreases to approximately 65 million TL when it is done with the domestic system. When the 6.100km non-signal line is built with the domestic system throughout Turkey, the approximate amount that will remain in the Republic of Turkey's vault is around 2 billion TL. Considering the Middle East and Turkic Republics, it is not a dream that we will be able to export the systems we import in the near future.”

UNINTERRUPTED SAFETY ON RAILWAYS

Noting that, like all HIMA solutions, the principle of Net Mühendislik Otomasyon company in railway solutions is defined by the motto “uninterrupted safety”; “HIMA solutions not only provide permanent safety, but also prevent unnecessary downtimes and help uninterrupted and safe system / facility operation. Safety is an indispensable condition for railway signaling systems. Rules to be followed in order to reach the required level of safety, including the IEC 61508 umbrella standard, EN 50126 (reliability, availability, maintanance and safety analysis), EN 50128 (standard covering error-safe software development processes) and EN 50129 (hardware features that can be used on railways) standard) standards are described extensively. Our HIMA HIMatrix and HIMaX safety PLC products used in railways have a SIL4 (safety integrity level) safety certificate, which defines the highest safety class according to CENELEC standards. ”

Alper Guclu, the main applications they can support their customers in the railways sector; Signalization, level crossings, safety applications on the vehicle, station safety, safe cornering, gauge control, side detection sensors in tunnels, kataner line checks and rail quality controls; making software on all of the products of these applications can be developed locally in Turkey; Even many domestic companies by implementing these applications in their own by implementing many important projects stressed.