Central Dispatcher (Poland)

[SurvivorSean]

So now I have a prototype question.  Is there a dispatcher that has control over a section of railroad (not CTC) where he can communicate or electronically know when trains have passed to get a big picture and take necessary action to keep things moving smooth?

In North America when we still had track warrant offices, this was how it was done.  The dispatcher would make the decision to the operator (interlocking or simple station) where he would copy train orders to the crews and they would receive their orders via picking up a piece of paper (known as a flimsy) which essentially is the track warrant.  I'm just curious what system if any can make these decisions when things are off schedule or for trains that are perhaps not on a schedule.

Thanks

Sean

[oli806]

Short answer: Yes.
Here is a Polish video about the function. They are called "dyspozytor": 

This why I like to make a difference between the term signaller and dispatcher when we are talking about the thing here in Europe. This of course doesn't apply to all countries here but I for sure know for Germany and I assume the basics at least are similar for Poland. So there are signallers who are operating the signal boxes and are pretty much responsible to guide the trains safely to their right destination by operating their signalling equipment. Also the signallers should usually be those who decide what happens within station limits. They choose which trains enters first and they choose track/platform according to the situation. Also they do the shunting.

Dispatchers supervise the operational process by either getting irregularity reports from the signallers via phone or if in place by the train numbering system which they can overview with a grahpical real-time timetable and a schematic line overview. There are multiple dispatching areas withing a regional section. Dispatchers are mostly meant to supervise the open lines between station limits.
So the data you enter into your real-time schedule ingame would probably be transferred to a dispatcher as well as the other signallers. This data will be used to make operational decisions. In my country the system receives time data automatically if there is a train numbering system equipment in the signal box. 

Dispatchers in Poland probably have those tasks among others:

• Observing flow of trains
• Order overtakings/wrong line running
• Agreeing to planned engineering works with restrictions for trains
• Communication with train operating comany/railway undertakings
• Creating opertational incident reports and assign delays/trains to incidents
• Taking operational measurements if required such as diversion of trains to bypass failures or similar

So in real life there is communication between signaller and dispatcher mostly regarding the queue of trains and in case of a failure. Either the dispatcher asks the signaller to rearrange the queue of trains (overtaking) or the signaller tells the dispatcher about a failure/engineering work and they will try to handle the situation while the dispatcher will feed it into the systems. 
Incident reports basically describe the failure and can be used e.g. for statistical reasons. Also railway undertakings might be entitled to refunds by the network operator in case there is e.g. a points failure. So the system will know which trains were affected and how much delay the built up so that the refund can be calculated.
The other way around the infastructur operator is also entitled to money by the railway undertaking if they cause a delay.  

Edited December 21, 2022 by oli806

[SurvivorSean]

Cool I'll have to watch that video later on.  I figured something was in place.

 

Thanks

Sean

[Howky]

In the Czech Republic, for example, we have central transport halls. But also individual stations, where e.g. only the dispatcher or the dispatcher and signalmen control the station. 🙂

Control room diagram:

 

Photo, source:Wikipedia

 

 

[SurvivorSean]

That is cool.

[Gazz292]

wow, it makes you wonder how on earth they managed to keep the railway running back when it was all manual wire pull signals and rod operated points, and bells to tell the signalers about the trains as they went into and out of sections.