Communication with "Control": what is it?

[davidknibb]

Quite often semi opaque references are made about Control. Control did this or Control did that.
Who exactly are Control ? Does each TOC have one or more control centres ? Is there an overarching coordinating Control for the whole of the UK?
What about coordination between TOCs sharing parts of routes ?
Who might work at Control ? Maybe signallers ? And how many people at Control at any given time - worked by one person or a team of people?
Have the railways always had a 'Control'?
And do for example SNCF,DB,FS or Renfe have control in a similar way ?

 

[AlterEgo]

Quite often semi opaque references are made about Control. Control did this or Control did that.
Who exactly are Control ? Does each TOC have one or more control centres ? Is there an overarching coordinating Control for the whole of the UK?
What about coordination between TOCs sharing parts of routes ?
Who might work at Control ? Maybe signallers ? And how many people at Control at any given time - worked by one person or a team of people?
Have the railways always had a 'Control'?
And do for example SNCF,DB,FS or Renfe have control in a similar way ?

Controllers work at control. They’re different to signallers and every franchised TOC has its own Control.

Controllers do not signal trains. Instead, they manage the train service. They’re the ones who decide what gets cancelled and what doesn’t, which trains stop out of course, and so on. You have Route controllers or train service controllers who do all of that, plus other types of controllers. Resource controllers manage real time and short term staffing problems, by rostering crew, asking them to work overtime etc.

Many Controls have someone from the fleet team there to look after real time issues with the trains themselves (offering troubleshooting and acting as a liaison). And some also have their Twitter team embedded in Control to provide real time running information.

An information controller sorts out all the passenger messaging separate to social media, like station PIS and internal messaging to crews.

A TOC will have anything between 6 and maybe 25 people on duty at once depending on size, and time of day.

 

[The Planner]

NR also has them, as well as the national control centre in MK.

 

[Dunnideer]

Quite often semi opaque references are made about Control. Control did this or Control did that.
Who exactly are Control ? Does each TOC have one or more control centres ? Is there an overarching coordinating Control for the whole of the UK?
What about coordination between TOCs sharing parts of routes ?
Who might work at Control ? Maybe signallers ? And how many people at Control at any given time - worked by one person or a team of people?
Have the railways always had a 'Control'?
And do for example SNCF,DB,FS or Renfe have control in a similar way ?

1) Every railway undertaking on the network has to have some sort of control office. Network Rail (nationally and individual routes), TOCs, FOCs, infrastructure contractors etc.. Some TOCs contract out their control function, e.g. Lumo and Hull Trains both use TPE control.

2) Network Rail has a National Operations Centre in Milton Keynes which co-ordinates national respose to incidents where necessary and does a lot of other infomation gathering to form a national picture of what’s happening where.

3) TOC controls liaise with each other or sometimes the Network Rail Train Running Controller (NR TRC) is the go between. The NR TRC is based in the NR Route control and has final say over what happens with traffic over their section.

4) Controllers are not signallers and control doesn’t undertake any signalling functions though they might be co-located with a big signalling centre. Control can be a big office with lots of people or, for some of the smaller FOCs or contractors, one person sitting in their kitchen with a laptop. They need a published phone number and access to various rail industry IT systems.

5) Having a centralised office to co-ordinate railway traffic (particularly freight traffic) was a pretty early idea in the 1910s - I think either the Midland Railway or the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway had the first control?

6) Yes as far as I know. I don’t see how you could operate a modern railway without one.

 

[High Dyke]

For Network Rail, there is the National Control Centre (as mentioned). Each Region also has their own control offices which supervise their respective route miles. For the East Coast Main Line, associated routes across North Lincolnshire, East and West Yorkshire, as well as the North East all come under the York Control. Midland Main Line, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and the local routes from Derby come under Derby Control. Other regions / routes will have similar set-ups.

 

[Falcon1200]

Controllers do not signal trains.

Controllers are not signallers and control doesn’t undertake any signalling functions

I would slightly qualify that by saying that, in Scotland at least, NR Route Control Managers are responsible for authorising Modified Working in the event of Tokenless Block failure.

I think either the Midland Railway or the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway had the first control?

IIRC it was the Midland, at Rotherham.

In Scotland NR Route Control and Scotrail Control are co-located in the same room, which of course makes absolute sense as a large part of the workload involves Scotrail trains. However there are huge complications when a section of route used by multiple operators, eg the ECML or WCML, is affected by an incident and NR Control has to advise and liaise with each and every one - It was simpler in BR days !

 

[DanNCL]

Tyne & Wear Metro does control a bit differently to the national network, on Metro control covers all aspects of the day to day operation, including signalling on the Nexus owned infrastructure.

 

[Dunnideer]

Tyne & Wear Metro does control a bit differently to the national network, on Metro control covers all aspects of the day to day operation, including signalling on the Nexus owned infrastructure.

I think a lot of the light rail systems are the same. London Underground has a similar set up with line controllers and signallers in the same room, with the signallers working under the direct instruction of the controllers. LUL does also have an overall network control room too which co-ordinates between the lines and disseminates info.

 

[bramling]

I think a lot of the light rail systems are the same. London Underground has a similar set up with line controllers and signallers in the same room, with the signallers working under the direct instruction of the controllers. LUL does also have an overall network control room too which co-ordinates between the lines and disseminates info.

Traditionally on LU controllers and signallers were separate - indeed the signallers would originally have been in local cabins. Over time there has been co-location, and more recently some of the rooms now have staff covering both (albeit not at the same time). The exception is the Bakerloo which has, kind of, actually combined the roles.

LU also has a 24/7 “service manager” role for each line which is partly admin and partly overall charge. This vagueness means this role generally doesn’t work particularly well and isn’t well regarded, but it’s one of those things which is a little too entrenched to change.

The other thing on LU is the line controller function deals with traction current switching and status, albeit there is still an electrical control room.