199811 – Ackland – Commissioning Tools for Railway Signalling

The purpose of this paper is to examine the tools available to the Commissioning Engineer to achieve successful commissioning.

Railway Commissioning activities are performed under a very tight time fiame, with substantial operational repercussions if the time fiame is exceeded, and safety repercussions if the testing procedures are not followed.

My paper today will firstly define a commissioning and its component activities. I will then look at a number of tools and strategies that are used, and then examine the use and abuse of these tools by examining a number of commissionings.

There have been a number of papers written about testing strategies but this paper concentrates on the method used to affect the alterations to signalling systems.