Design of locomotive location indicator communication system

Locomotive transportation plays an important role in Botswana. It plays a critical role in the transportation of people, livestock, raw materials and goods. It now faces new challenges in a highly competitive economy in the form of efficiency and the onslaught from road trains, the latter of which often use a subsidised, government funded road network. Whilst perhaps the national railway operator cannot do much to change the advantage enjoyed by the road hauliers, it is on the operational efficiency side that much can be gained by the deployment of appropriate, cutting-edge technical solutions. One operational problem that Botswana Railways (BR) and others using similar technologies for locating presence on site and positions of their trains and cargo, typically the DC Track Circuit and the Axle Counter System respectively, is that the power supply equipment associated with the operations of the two systems is located on unsecured environments, and thus susceptible to vandalism and theft. Vandalism and theft of this equipment on the BR network has escalated over the years, seriously undermining the efficiency and throughput of the network, whilst equally exposing the cargo to potential loss. This work presents a new scheme of locating the positions of locomotives by using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to track, in real-time, the location of vehicles and equipment The scheme proposes two GPS receivers placed on the train, one on the engine and the other on the last carriage. The receivers placed on the train transmit information back to a control room on an interactive graphical display unit. The results of the simulated communications system will be presented.