Seeing a train depot's morning coming

What's on the screen

• The 3D depot. A four-track maintenance shed (two inspection pits, an underfloor wheel lathe and a heavy-maintenance track), seven stabling tracks and the wheel measurement station at the depot's entrance. The sets come back from service in the evening, are measured, inspected and stabled, and leave for service from 05:00. "Wheel condition" colours each set's wheels by the wheel flat measured on them.
• The morning service. The plan needs 9 sets. The panel shows how many will be ready, on the measurements so far, and where the sets are: in service, in inspection, waiting for the lathe, on the lathe or ready.
• Wheel measurements and the lathe. Every set's wheel flat as it comes in, against the 40 mm limit. A set over the limit is turned before it goes back into service. The lathe panel shows tonight's queue against the morning's last departure, and under it the sets that needed the lathe over the last 14 nights.
• The advisor. It works out from the same data which set will miss the morning, and why. Here Set 09 can't get on the lathe before 03:22 and is done at 06:22; the last departure is at 05:50. Over the last 14 nights 59% of the lathe's hours went to one set: Set 07 was over the limit 10 times, the other sets 0.9 times on average. When the same set keeps coming back with flats, the cause is often a wheel that locks under braking; the advisor says to check Set 07's brakes and wheel slide protection (WSP). The train twin demo looks inside Set 07.

How to try it

1. Use the camera buttons to move from the whole depot to the shed, the wheel lathe and the measurement station, or drag to orbit.
2. Scrub the night back and forth in the bar below. The sets come back from 19:00; once Set 09 is measured at 22:22, the morning service is a set short and the advisor gives its finding.
3. "Wheel condition" colours the wheels by their flats. "Show in the depot" on the advisor card marks Set 07 and the lathe.
4. "Watch the film" plays the same scene full screen as a short walkthrough.

In a real installation

Everything on this page is simulated: the depot, the sets and the numbers are representative. In a real depot, the sets' positions and moves come from the depot's management or signalling system, the wheel measurements from the measuring system at the entrance, and the inspection and lathe records from the maintenance management system. The advisor's rules are set up for that depot's service plan, its fleet and its maintenance limits.

We run the same analysis on your depot or workshop, with your data. If you are thinking about it for your own site, write to us with your fleet and the data sources you have.