From August 6 to 7, the 2025 Coal Industry Railway Work Conference was successfully held in Shanghai. Over 200 representatives from the National Railway Administration, China National Coal Association, and member units attended the conference. Wang Yin, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of CASCO, delivered the opening speech, while Vice President Wang Xiaoyong released the XeDRT on behalf of CASCO.

Wang Yin Delivering the Opening Speech

XeDRT is another comprehensive industry solution launched by CASCO following the XiDRT. Embracing the legacy of XiDRT and igniting the core of intelligence, it is dedicated to serving the digital upgrade of freight railways. Building upon the XiDRT digital framework and AI technologies, it tailors intelligent solutions according to the transportation characteristics of the energy industry, facilitating the sector’s digital transformation.

Wang Xiaoyong Unveiling the XeDRT Solution

Addressing the long-standing challenges in freight railways, such as complex dispatching, weak collaborative control, high operational costs, and heavy reliance on manual labor, XeDRT has developed systems for intelligent operation control, intelligent operation, intelligent maintenance, and intelligent operations. By integrating "management-control-maintenance", it achieves a dual improvement in safety and efficiency while reducing both costs and energy consumption. Several technologies in this solution have already yielded pioneering results.

Intelligent Operation Control

By establishing the integrated dispatching platform for dispatching management and control and comprehensive transportation dispatching platform for rail-road-water integration, it realizes data fusion, professional collaboration, and role integration. This enables precise allocation of transportation capacity, and improves efficiency while effectively reducing labor intensity and construction costs. This achievement has been successfully applied in over 300 stations of various local railway companies across the country.

Intelligent Operation

It integrates key technologies such as moving block, virtual coupling, autonomous freight train operation, and integrated train dispatching, and develops flexibly deployable Train Autonomous Control System based on BeiDou positioning (TACN). In its application at Pingmei Railway, this system reduced tracking intervals from 25 minutes to 4 minutes, significantly enhancing transportation efficiency. The system has also been applied to the railway from the Port of Morebaya to Simandou Mining Area in Guinea, serving the world-class Simandou Iron Mine transportation.

Intelligent Maintenance

By integrating multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional data, it builds a digital maintenance platform and realizes intelligent decision-making for full-process maintenance through business digitization, maintaining equipment in optimal condition at the lowest cost. This solution has been piloted at Baofeng and Shenxi stations of Pingmei Railway.

Intelligent Operations

It covers the entire process of energy "production-consumption", including intelligent shunting, intelligent locomotive maintenance, intelligent inspection, smart mining, intelligent perception, and intelligent training.

• Intelligent shunting integrates functions such as shunting safety protection, safety management, comprehensive early warning, and autonomous operation. Designed with a centralized architecture, it utilizes advanced technologies like 4G/5G wireless communication, satellite positioning, environmental perception, intelligent recognition, and automatic locomotive control to provide 24/7 safety protection for shunting personnel. While compatible with existing workflows, the system supports automatic auxiliary driving and intelligent guidance services, ensuring shunting safety while effectively reducing labor intensity and improving operational efficiency.

• Intelligent locomotive maintenance enables real-time monitoring of on-site production, and integrates operational processes such as application, maintenance, preparation, and crew management to build a unified management and control system. This simultaneously enhances safety management and production efficiency, while significantly improving on-site command, response, coordination, supervision, and analysis.
• Intelligent inspection leverages CASCO’s expertise in low-altitude operations, integrates equipment such as drones, robotic dogs, and IoT devices to establish a comprehensive monitoring system for the entire coal production, transportation, and consumption process. This achieves multi-dimensional perception and management of equipment status, personnel operations, and environmental risks.
• Smart mining combines intelligent control technology with mining operations to create a new-generation smart mining system solution, KAIM2.0. By addressing blind spots in digital monitoring, it effectively enhances the safety of manual operations underground, the intelligence level of mine transportation, and the smartness of production dispatching.

At this critical time marking the conclusion of the "14th Five-Year Plan" and the beginning of the "15th Five-Year Plan", the conference successfully gathered the collective wisdom of the coal railway industry, accumulating innovative momentum for high-quality development. As an active participant in the coal railway transportation, CASCO will continue to deepen its technological research and development. With innovative achievements such as XeDRT as the foundation, CASCO will collaborate with industry associations and partners to promote the upgrading of freight railway technology and equipment. Fully committed to the mission of building a transportation nation where "people enjoy convenient travel and goods flow smoothly", CASCO will provide robust technological support for energy security and green development.