Aurizon is Australia’s largest rail freight operator and is in the top 50 ASX companies transporting more than 250 million tonnes of Australian commodities. It connects miners, primary producers, and industry with international and domestic markets across an extensive national rail and road network.
The Challenge
Aurizon had expanded the Newlands Rail Line (Queensland) to include a second balloon loop at Abbot Point and a second holding road at Pring Yard. The expansion also included track duplication, three passing loops, an upgrade of existing tracks, two new bridges, and relevant updated signalling and signage.
With so many new upgrades, Aurizon required a training simulator allowing drivers to become familiar with the route prior to construction and commissioning with a flexible training platform that suited the dispersed nature of their staff around regional Queensland. This resulted in the development of the Route Familiarization Simulator for Drivers’ training that included the entire 180km line that could be delivered in multiple locations. Aurizon required a simulator with functionality to travel in both directions, enabling new and existing drivers to easily and comfortably familiarise themselves with the upgraded route before physically using it. This provides an ongoing use of the design models and longer term training tool to support operations.
The Solution
Key Aurizon and GHD staff and stakeholders were engaged to utilise the project design models to develop longer term training tools that provided an ongoing benefit to Aurizon operations teams that was safe, resilient, cost effective and adaptable.
GHD’s Virtual and Augmented Reality (VAR) team developed and delivered a solution that included a simulator, which had a viewer application for both the Trainee and a Control Application for the trainer. Functionality included the ability to record the trainee’s session so it could be played back for review at a later date. This allowed for continuous improvement as it permitted various decision makers to gain further insights regarding issues whilst showcasing opportunities and learnings. The Route Familiarisation Simulator gave the trainer the ability to control in real time the training environment. This required the trainees to respond to changes within the environment, whether that was signal failures or obstacles in the train path providing multiple potential scenarios. The advantage of this is it allowed for increased complexity based on the trainee's skill levels.
The digital model was built from the available data sources that included existing digital terrain data, GIS share files for fast track alignment, signal placement, signage placement, speed indicators and much more.
The Benefit
The Trainee and Trainer Control Application Simulator helped to improve safety and enhance knowledge of the driver by providing a safe and cost effective environment to determine driver competency levels. The Aurizon team found the VR program to be interesting and helpful whilst maintaining simplicity for ease of use with the key benefits of:
- providing ongoing utilisation of design models into the assets operational life
- multiple scenario development controlled by the trainer
- clear assessment of drivers reaction and problem solving skills in a safe environment
In addition the ability to let trainees driver trains and assess competency prior to putting them in the driver’s seat of a potentially dangerous and expensive equipment improved driver training time and outcomes.