13th IFAC Symposium on Control in Transportation Systems

The International Federation of Automatic Control

September 12-14, 2012. Sofia, Bulgaria

Automatic Interlocking Table Generation for Railway Stations using Symbolic

Algebra
Uğur Yıldırım*, Mustafa S. Durmuş**, Mehmet T. Söylemez**

*Control Engineering Department, Istanbul Technical University,
Istanbul, Turkey, (Tel: +90-544-5984158; e-mail: [email protected]).
**Control Engineering Department, Istanbul Technical University,
Istanbul, Turkey, (e-mail: {durmusmu, soylemezm}@itu.edu.tr)

Abstract: Interlocking is the most important component of a signalization system, which ensures safe
travel and transportation. An interlocking system helps movement of trains on desired routes in fixed
block signaling systems. The first step in the design of interlocking systems is to generate interlocking
tables. Generation of interlocking tables for small scaled stations or railway yards can be realized easily.
However, when the topology of the station is complicated, generation of the corresponding interlocking
table becomes considerably difficult. In this study, a program that automatically generates interlocking
tables for a given railway yard is explained. One of the main advantages of the program is that, switches
and signal lights are placed automatically for a given station or railway yard depending on the topology.
Keywords: Railway Signalization Systems, Interlocking Table, Traffic control, Symbolic Algebra

Mathematica™ programming environment, is introduced.
1. INTRODUCTION
The main advantage of the programme is its simple user
An interlocking program is a kind of safety related software interface that allows defining a railway station topology by
which controls all components of a railway signalization only drawing lines. In section 2, brief information is given
system such as track circuits, switches and signal lights. As about all components of a railway signalization system.
mentioned in (Haxthausen et. al., 2010), the interlocking also Basic principles of the automatic interlocking table generator
allows reservation of routes on which the trains can safely programme are explained in section 3. An interlocking table
move. Before designing an interlocking system, first route is generated for a model railway station by using the
specifications have to be determined correctly. All route programme. Finally, conclusions are given in section 5.
specifications are shown in a table named interlocking table.
Therefore, the first step in the design of an interlocking 2. RAILWAY SIGNALIZATION COMPONENTS
system is the construction of the interlocking table.
A railway signalization system consists of a traffic control
For small sized railway stations, constructions of the centre (TCC), an interlocking system and a railway station.
interlocking table is relatively easy, but when the size of the Traffic control centre makes route reservation requests for
railway station gets bigger, construction of the interlocking trains to move on the railway station. Interlocking system
table becomes very time-consuming and complex. This performs required actions for the incoming route requests.
increases possibility of making fatal logical errors, which are Interlocking system also checks error conditions of the
very difficult to detect in the later stages of the design and railway station components such as track circuits, switches
test process. In the literature, some studies are made about and signals. A simple exemplary railway station is given in
automatic generation of the interlocking table (Kuzu et. al., Fig. 1.
2011) and verification (Fokkink and Hollingshead, 1998),
(Petersen, 1998), (Tombs et. al., 2002), (Winter, 2002), in
6BC

3ST
order to eliminate this kind of problems. Formal methods like
Abstract States Machines (Winter and Robinson, 2003),
6BB

Finite State Machines (Miradabi and Yazdi, 2009), Coloured 002BT 3T 3 2ST
5
4D

Petri Nets (Anunchai, 2010) or Boolean Logic (Roanes-

6BA

Lozano et. al., 2010) is also considered in some studies. In all 001BT 1T 1ST
these studies, the generated interlocking table does not give 1
2D

detailed information and before the interlocking table

generation, the components of the railway station have to be
defined manually. Fig. 1. A simple railway station.
In this study, an automatic interlocking table generator
programme, which was written using symbolic algebra in

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2.1 Track Circuits 2.4 Routes

Track circuits give information about the occupation of the In a railway station, trains can proceed if there is a reserved
railway blocks. When a train enters to the railway block, the route for them by TCC. Routes can be reserved between two
track circuit is short-circuited by the axles of the train and the track circuits with no switches. When a route request is send
track circuit gives that information to the interlocking system. to the interlocking system, conflicting routes are checked
Some railway blocks can contain more than one track circuit, first. If there is no reservation for a conflicting route, related
especially if the railway block has a switch. Track circuits are switches are turned to the required positions. After that if
denoted as 001BT, 002BT, 1T, 3T, 1ST, 2ST and 3ST in Fig. there is no error for related components of the route, the route
1. is reserved and the starting signal light of the route opens the
related colours. There are 10 different routes such as 001BT –
2.2 Switches 1ST, 001BT – 2ST, 1ST – 001BT and 1ST – 002BT, in the
railway station given in Fig. 1.
Switches are used to make the trains to change tracks in a
railway station. Most of the switches have an entrance track 2.5 Interlocking System
and two exit tracks named normal and reverse. Switches are
turned to required positions by the interlocking system when Interlocking system is a vital component of a signalization
a route is requested. Switches can also be controlled system. It checks the incoming request from TCC and
manually by TCC if there is no route reservation on them. compares these requests with the actual situation of the
Switches are denoted as 1, 3 and 5 in Fig. 1. components of the railway station. If all safety criteria are
met the request is accepted, otherwise it is rejected. The
2.3 Signal Lights interlocking system also compares incoming signals from the
railway station and can detect component errors. For example
if normal and reverse indication signals of a switch are
Signal lights give information about the next railway block to
coming to the interlocking system, an error in the switch is
the train driver. In Turkish State Railways, there are mainly
detected and all requests about the related switch is rejected.
three kinds of signal lights: four aspect tall, three aspect tall
and three aspect dwarf signal. Explanations of color
combinations for these signal lights are given in Table 1. 2.6 Interlocking Table
Signal lights are denoted as 2D, 4D, 6BA, 6BB and 6BC in
Fig. 1. Interlocking table shows all possible route reservations in a
railway station with details. In an interlocking table, each
Table 1. Definitions of the signal lights route is shown with related track circuits, related switches
and required switch positions and starting signal light with its
Type Colours and Definitions colour combinations with respect to the end signal.
Four aspect Red: Stop, next block is occupied.
tall signal Yellow: Next block is free, but the second For a safe interlocking system design, first the interlocking
light block is occupied. Proceed carefully. table must be obtained correctly. If a track circuit or a switch
Green: Next two blocks are free, train can is added to the station, the interlocking table can change
proceed. completely. Therefore as the railway station is getting bigger,
Yellow-Yellow: There is a turning and next the generation of the interlocking table is getting harder.
block is free, but the second block is
occupied. 3. AUTOMATIC INTERLOCKING TABLE
Yellow-Green: There is a turning and next GENERATION
two blocks are free. Proceed with a
predefined speed. Obtaining an interlocking table for a complex railway station
Three aspect Red: Stop, next block is occupied. takes too much time and needs extreme attention. If there is
tall signal Yellow: Next block is free, but the second an error in the interlocking table, there will be errors in the
light block is occupied. Proceed carefully. design of the interlocking system that can result in fatal
Green: Next two blocks are free, train can accidents. Therefore, in order to eliminate possible errors in
proceed. the interlocking table, a computer algorithm can be used. In
Three aspect Red: Stop, next block is occupied. this study, an automatic interlocking table generator
dwarf signal Yellow: There is a turning and next block programme is realized in a symbolic algebra environment.
light is free, but the second block is occupied. The programme has a simple user interface built on Microsoft
Green: There is a turning and next two .NET® framework as shown in Fig. 2. User can easily define
blocks are free. Proceed with a predefined a railway yard topology by drawing the track parts in the
speed. railway yard. Track circuits, switches, signal lights and routes
are identified by the programme and for a feasible topology
the interlocking table is automatically generated. In this

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section, basic principles of the automatic interlocking table track, is defined as the normal exit track. Then, the last track
generation are explained. is defined as the reverse exit track. The process of switch
identification is illustrated in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4. Switch identification.

A pseudo code for switch identification is given as follows:

> Count the number of common points in the
Fig. 2. User interface of the automatic interlocking table “Point List”.
generator. > If there is a point repeated for 3 times,
determine this point as a “Switch Point”.
> Draw a blue rectangle around this “Switch
Point”.
3.1 Track Identification
> Add “Switch Point” to the “Switch Point
List”.
Each line drawn by the user is considered as a railway track > Find tracks of “Switch Point” from the
by the programme. Starting and finishing points of the track “Track List”.
are saved in a list named PointList. Every track (except the > Determine x axis coordinates of these
first track) must start with a point which already exists in the tracks to obtain the entrance track.
PointList. The tracks are saved in a separate list named > Compare slopes of the other tracks with the
TrackList. Track identification process is illustrated in Fig. 3. entrance track to obtain the normal and the
reverse exit tracks of this “Switch Point”.
> Add switch to the “Switch List”.

3.3 Track Circuit Identification

In a railway station, there can be two kinds of track circuits.

These are stationary track circuits (STC) which contain only
one track and switch area track circuits (SATC) which
contain more than one track. STCs do not contain a switch
Fig. 3. Track identification. point. Firstly, a track is chosen from the TrackList to identify
track circuits in the railway station. Then, the points of the
A pseudo code for track identification is given as follows: chosen track are examined to test if they are switch points. If
none of points is a switch point, the track is defined as an
> Define point1 when the mouse is clicked.
> Define point2 when the mouse is released. STC. If the chosen track has at least one switch point, the
> Draw a line from point1 to point2. other tracks, which have the same switch point, are found in
> Define a “Track” between point1 and point2. the TrackList and all these tracks are defined as an SATC.
> Add track “to" the “Track List”. Lastly, the track circuits are saved in a list named
> Add points to the “Point List”. TrackCircuitList. The process of track circuit identification is
illustrated in Fig. 5.
3.2 Switch Identification

A point can be a component of one, two or three tracks. If a

point is a component of three tracks, then the point is defined
as a switch point by the programme and it is not allowed to
draw a new track starting from this point. The switch points
are saved in a seperate list named SwitchPointList.
In order to define entrance and exit tracks of a switch, the
tracks, which contain the switch point, are considered. By
considering the other points of the tracks, the entrance track
is determined as the track which is on the other side of the Fig. 5. Track circuit identification.
switch point with respect to the other two tracks on the x
axis. The other two tracks are separated with respect to their
slopes. The track, which has the same slope with the entrance

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A pseudo code for track circuit identification is given as > Find the required switch positions for the
follows: route and add this information into the
route.
> Define a new empty list. > Add the route to the “Route List”.
> Select tracks in order from the “Track
List” and add to new list. 3.5 Signal Identification
> Examine the points of each selected track
in the new list if they are a “Switch Point”
or not. Signal lights are placed on the connection of station and
> If track has a “Switch Point”, check the switch track circuits. There are three types of signal lights as
related tracks which contain common point to mentioned in section 2.3 generally used in Turkish Railways.
the new list and go to previous step. Three aspect dwarf signals inform the driver that there is at
> Set this new list as “Track Circuit”. least one reverse switch for all possible routes. Three aspect
> If “Track Circuit” has only one track, set tall signals mean that there is no reverse switch for all
“Track Circuit” as “Stationary Track possible routes. Four aspect signals, which are used generally
Circuit”. Otherwise, set “Track Circuit” as
on the entrance of railway stations, indicate reverse switches
“Switch Area Track Circuit”.
> Add “Track Circuit” to the “Track Circuit exist for some routes. They have one colour declarations
List”. (yellow or green) for straight routes and two colour
declarations (yellow-yellow or yellow-green) for routes that
3.4 Route Identification have a turning (reverse switch). These criteria are used to
determine the type of the signal light of a chosen STC.
Routes are defined between two STCs. To identify routes, Defined signals are saved in a list named SignalList. Signal
firstly an STC is chosen from the TrackCircuitList. Then, the identification is illustrated in Fig. 7.
points of the chosen track circuit are examined and the other
track circuits, which are connected to the chosen track circuit,
are found. If the connected track circuits contain a switch(ie
one of the connected track circuits is an SATC), then other
track circuits connected to this SATC are found. This
procedure continues until all possible track circuit chains are
found. Each track circuit chain (with required switch
positions) is saved in a list named RouteList. Route
identification is illustrated in Fig. 6.

Fig. 7. Signal identification.

A pseudo code for signal identification is given as follows:

> Choose a “Stationary Track Circuit” from
the “Track Circuit List”.
> Find all routes which start with the chosen
track circuit.
> Compare switch positions of all routes.
> If there is a switch which is in reverse
position for all routes, determine the signal
Fig. 6. Route identification. light as a three aspect dwarf signal.
> If there does not exist any switch in
Pseudo code about route identification is as follows: reverse position for all routes, determine
the signal light as a three aspect tall
> Choose a “Stationary Track Circuit” from signal.
the “Track Circuit List”. > Otherwise determine the signal light as a
> Find connected track circuits with the four aspect tall signal.
chosen track circuit. > Add the signal to the “Signal List”.
> If there is a “Switch Area Track Circuit”
in the connected track circuits, find track 3.6 Generation of Interlocking Table
circuits connected to this “Switch Area Track
Circuit”.
> Generate all possible track circuit chains
In the interlocking table all possible routes are shown in a
which start with the chosen track circuit and detailed table. Each route is shown with its name, track
ends with another “Stationary Track Circuit” circuits, switch positions, signal lights and starting signal
and contains zero or more “Switch Area Track light color combinations. After drawing the railway stations
Circuits”. topology, the interlocking table can be automatically
> Define each possible track circuit chain as generated by pressing a button. All identifications are done
a route. automatically.

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4. INTERLOCKING CODE DESIGN AND APPLICATION route number, the second column shows track circuits, the
third column shows normal position switches, the fourth
The model railway station given on Fig. 8. is used to column shows reverse position switches and the fifth column
illustrate the working principles of the programme. shows starting and finishing signals with colour
combinations.

After obtaining the interlocking table, the interlocking code

can easily be converted to Programmable Logic Controller
(PLC) codes by using general function blocks as discussed in
(Durmuş et. al., 2012). Each function block takes TCC
requests as an input and has an output which contains
interlocking system decisions. Some function blocks have
also specific inputs for the connection between the other
blocks.
For example, the route function block has inputs for related
track circuits, switches and signals. In the generated
interlocking table, Route 7 (RT7) has three switches (SW1,
SW3 and SW5), four track circuits (TC8, TC1, TC2 and
TC10), a starting signal (SN2) and a finishing signal (SN6).
Usage of the route function block for RT7 is shown in Fig.
11. The signal function block has inputs for color
combinations. In the interlocking table, it is seen that Signal 1
Fig. 8. Model railway station (Hardware simulator). (SN1) must be yellow when RT2 is reserved and SN6 is red.
Usage of the signal function block for Signal 1 (SN1) is
Firstly, the model railway station topology is drawn in the illustrated in Fig. 12.
programme and the proper track circuits, switches, routes and
signal lights are found automatically as shown in Fig. 9. After Lastly, the interlocking code is tested using an interlocking
that, interlocking table of the model railway station is test programme (ITP). After all tests are passed with ITP,
generated automatically. 34 different routes are found in the software and hardware simulators which are mentioned in
station topology. A part of the generated interlocking table is (Mutlu et. al., 2012) are used to complete the validation of
shown in Fig. 10. The first column of the table shows the the system in the laboratory.

Fig. 9. Drawing of the model railway station.

Fig. 10. A part of generated interlocking table of the model railway station.

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REFERENCES
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Fig. 12. Signal function block. railway interlocking system using Maple, Mathematics
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5. CONCLUSION Tombs, D., Robinson, N., Nikandros, G. (2002). Signalling
Control Table Generations and Verification, Proceedings
In this study, basic principles of an automatic interlocking of Conference on Railway Engineering.
table generator programme were explained. An interlocking Winter, K. (2002). Model Checking Railway Interlocking
table generated for a model railway station using the Systems, Proceedings of the Australian Computer
programme is given as an example. Laboratory tests show Science Communications, 24.
that the interlocking code that is written by the help of the Winter, K., Robinson, N. (2003). Modelling large railway
generated interlocking table works correctly. The generation interlockings and model checking small ones,
of the interlocking code can also be automatized in the future. Proceedings of the 26th Australian Computer Science
Therefore, a safe interlocking code for large and complex Conference, pp. 309–316.
stations can be obtained in a very short time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported by The Scientific and Technological
Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) project number
108G186 – The National Railway Signalization Project.

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