Recently, CASCO completed the full-functional delivery of the integrated dispatching system for Huainan Railway Transport Branch of Huaihe Energy (Group) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huainan Railway Transport"). It not only enhanced the efficiency of freight railway transportation but also further promoted the intelligent upgrade and digital transformation of the enterprise.

The Huainan mining area spans Huainan and Fuyang cities in Anhui Province, covering an area of approximately 3,000 square kilometers with a length of about 100 kilometers from east to west and a width of about 30 kilometers from north to south. It is one of China's 14 coal bases with an annual production capacity of over 100 million tons. The dedicated railway in the mining area covers 20 stations, connecting the Beijing-Shanghai Line in the east and the Beijing-Kowloon Line in the west, undertaking the crucial task of coal transportation.

The daily operation of the dedicated railway in the Huainan mining area involves close collaboration among multiple departments, jobs and positions, with overlapping frequencies of train and shunting operations. As the mining area's production capacity increases, traditional dispatching methods and outdated equipment can no longer meet production demands, necessitating an urgent upgrade of new technologies and equipment.

To address this, CASCO explored the site conditions of the Huainan mining area, considered transportation organization, interval operations, station operations, and equipment maintenance, and created a comprehensive dispatching command system that integrates the main needs of various subsystems in railway transportation, by integrating and innovating around the organizational structure and transportation production characteristics of the dedicated railway, and leveraging its multiple product advantages in railway signaling and transportation.

Huainan Railway Transport Dispatching Room

With the train dispatching command system as the core, the system achieves dispatching command, transportation organization, freight management, and information sharing based on close subsystem coordination, precise planning, automatic information collection, and intelligent data analysis, ensuring transportation safety and improving efficiency at a lower cost.

Since June 2023, CASCO has gradually launched functions such as train dispatching, plan management, locomotive operation, construction management, train management, statistical analysis, equipment management, and freight management for this project. Through equipment integration, data integration, and function integration, the system has formed three intelligent platforms that effectively strengthen horizontal connections between various businesses.

Three Intelligent Platforms

• Intelligent Transportation Organization Platform: it fully integrates systems such as plan management, dispatching command, and freight management, unifies the platform and optimizes the user interface based on job setting and integration, thus enhancing the automation of dispatching command, as well as response and processing speeds to events.

• Transportation Safety Protection Platform: it realizes functions such as truck fault image detection and overload detection and recognition, and utilizes the Internet of Things, modern sensing technologies, and equipment to improve the prevention and management of railway transportation safety risks.

• Intelligent Equipment Operation Platform: it achieves full electronic management of in-use equipment and spare parts, establishes a technical information database, categorizes and stores technical information, and enables functions such as quick retrieval and consultation.

Since the system's operation, it has greatly facilitated the standardization and optimization of various jobs' dispatching processes at Huainan Railway Transport, effectively improved the automation of train plan preparation, adjustment, and transportation operations. On the basis of ensuring driving safety, it has increased transportation efficiency and saved transportation costs. It is worth mentioning that the system has been applied in multiple local railway enterprises across the country, with over 300 stations in operation, bringing significant economic and social benefits.