SPOORNET IS in the midst of implementing its Rolling Stock Information System (RSIS).
The RSIS is a computer system that works a bit like the internet except that it works just between the railways. The benefits for rail customers is that there will be only one railway to deal with when they move their goods in Southern Africa by rail, said Colin Roberts, Spoornet's RSIS project manager.
The system is installed in all the regional railways and sends messages between them about international traffic, so every railway knows what the other is doing when it needs to. They use satellite communication to do this, he said.
The customers can talk to their own railway to track the movement of goods, to estimate the arrival time and to confirm the goods delivery to the final rail destination.
It will all add up to a more predictable international rail service, he said.
RSIS makes possible the co-operation and exchange of information between railways so that the customer experiences one, virtual railway and an improved service, he said.
This is being complemented by revised schedules for trains to inter-connect at borders, which isn't always the case at present.
Improved planning in the way interline trains are made up should also reduce the amount of shunting that happens when traffic is interchanged from one railway to another, said Roberts.
The RSIS project will implement a realtime, interlinked, interactive information system for regional rail operation on the 10 railways of Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA), Zambia and Zimbawe (NRZ and BBR). These railways are all the same gauge so you can send a consignment from Cape Town to Ndola or to Dar es Salaam without transhipping it, he said.
The RSIS system will enable these railways to monitor and manage the location status and condition of everything that moves - consignments, wagons, containers, locomotives and trains.
The central software components of the system are Spoornet's SPRINT and UNCTAD's ACIS systems. These were already installed in four railways but they did not yet talk to one other, he said.
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