PTC Product Refinement: New Features for Legacy System

Having developed a key interlocking product over 25 years ago, our client, a prominent player in the rail industry, now faces ongoing challenges with legacy system modernization. In their current effort to upgrade the product for PTC compliance for a regional railroad, critical troubleshooting was required to ensure reliable cab-to-ground communication before modernization could proceed.

Modernize the legacy interlocking control product to enable advanced functionality for a regional railroad.

Prepare the PTC-enabled product for modernization and upgrade it, ensuring the ultimate reliability of its safety-critical functions.

Intending to implement new features, PSA’s engineering team conducted an extensive review of the legacy interlocking controller's code with issues identification and risk assessment. 

For both the controller’s firmware and the interlocking application logic builder, we identified and resolved the following major issues:

• Fixed tool activation and PTC application generation crashes
• Restored flexible and scalable data link management
• Established timely network failure notifications via alert messages 
• Enabled configuration saving post-restart

With the critical troubleshooting complete, the modernization phase introduced these major enhancements:

• Extended setup options for Wayside Interface Units 

• Input data validation for cab-to-ground communication 

• Time synchronization initiation

• Backup synchronization in case of network issues

• Switching to daylight-saving time

• ACSES-compliant nomenclature integration

During the project, the client presented ten additional requests, all of which were seamlessly implemented. As a result, the safety-critical interlocking controller now fully supports advanced PTC features.

• Investigation & risk assessment
• Defects resolution
• Software development