Note
Editors, friends: the outline is here
The views and interpretations expressed herein are fully my own, and do not represent those of my employer. No confidential, safety-sensitive, proprietary or internal documents were used in writing or researching; all cited material is publicly available.
Communications Based Train Control, or CBTC is an increasingly important technology, but, despite it's increasing profile, it is not well understood by most people, especially in the public sector. Some of this is inevitable for a highly technical system in the already niche industry that is railroading, but this need not be the case. To that effect, this series will attempt to make accessible the underlying principles of Communications Based Train Control, contextualize it within the broader history of railway train control, and provide a starting point for members of the public and the industry interested in learning more about this crucial technology.
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This series will focus on fostering an understanding of first principles that will be widely applicable. It will take a vendor-agnostic approach. Whenever possible, a focus on theory will be preferred over discussion of specific CBTC installations. While implementation details may vary, underlying concepts do not. Additionally, most CBTC operators have generally not made public the level of technical detail required to facilitate worthwhile discussion here. Later in the series, there will be detailed looks at some specific products and their histories, including the Seltrac and
As is true with nearly every railway technology, regional differences are omnipresent. Different suppliers, operators and academics all call things by different names. In an effort to reduce ambiguity and be as widely applicable as possible, whenever possible, this series will adhere to the terminology set out within IEEE1474.1, the preeminent standard for communications based train control [1].
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