Logical control of the laboratory railways model

Abstract

The topic of this paper is focused on description of the laboratory railway model and its control system which is based on PLC automat. On introduction are described main parts of the railway model which is located in department’s laboratory (railway station, depot, works railway, storage track and sections of the railway). In first chapter are shortly described rules of the railway traffic (theory related to safety systems in railway). Also the safety system proposal for modelated railways is here (types of semaphores and their position in model). The second chapter describes tracking control system of this model (PLC system ABB line 800 and its components – central control unit, input/output units, communication units of industrial bus Profibus and power-supply unit) and the methods of its programming (with using of the PC computer and special development software ABB Control Builder). In the next are described algorithms for controlling of traffic on the railway model. In the last part, the possible evolutions of automatic systems are described here (proposal of manually controled panel which will use PLC, visualisation of the tracking traffic, possibilities to control by using of the digital coder/decoder systems etc.).