Simulation of Padua Central station

[gfgit]

Hello everyone.

Today I want to share my project of simulating central railway station of Padova (Italy).

The purpose of the project is to feed train occupation information to Padova Signalbox A (Cabina A).

This signalbox has an electro-mechanical apparatus (ACE) built in 1957 and used to control half of the station until 2005. The other parts of the station belonged to signalbox B and C, and together were coordinated by station master office.

In 2005 all signalboxes were decommissioned and in 2 days a computer apparatus was activated which since then controls the whole station. Signalboxes B and C were demolished soon after as part of redesign of Padova station track plan.

Luckily Signalbox A building was kept almost intact and also the portion of station near it still has same track plan as when signalbox was operational.

Now this apparatus is part of a museum, maintained by volunteers of Società Veneta Ferrovie (https://www.societavenetaferrovie.it/).

I started by editing traintastic-simulator code to allow image background, then I took some screenshot of google earth aerial imagery.

This was not ideal as the images where low quality and did not align precisely, so I downloaded Google Earth Desktop as it allows to export 8K images of chosen area.
This was much better and with few images I could cover the whole station.

Then I carefully shape tracks on top of these images, this process takes time and is not yet completed!

Now some screenshots of current state:

Luckily we have the schematic to help on reconstruct track circuits (you can recognize signals G and H on picture above):

This is west part of central station, controlled by Signalbox A:

This is Montà junction and the triangle between Padova central station, Padova Campo di Marte and Milan direction:

Now the challenge is to connect simulator to physical relays using an Arduino and finishing to map the station layout.

Hope you enjoyed the topic!

[reinder]

This is awesome! Traintastic simulator wasn’t designed for this but it is really cool it can do this now with your improvements! I’d love to see more updated here!

[gfgit]

For whom wants to play with the simulator, here is the latest layout file:

padova_centrale.json (122.7 KB)

Signals which you can see in my screenshot do not work yet in standard traintastic-simulator but layout should still load fine.

Some other pictures, this was initial experiment with maps screenshots:

Here is side by side, editing and checking alignment of tracks over background:

Then there are Signalbox B tracks. Since good google earth images are too knew for the epoch we want to reproduce I had to do a collage. Luckily a friend of mine passed me an old aerial image taken in 1987 which I stretched over 2009 images until it fitted decently. Done with Gimp and a lot of patience .

Here you can see the interaction of circuit simulator with traintastic, platform V is occupied by a train an thus shown in red on the station master panel, and with lights off in signalbox B panel:

Here is the line towards Milan with working signals commanded by circuit simulator based on track status send by traintastic: