Intelligent Management System Project for Turnouts in the Non-Centralized Area of Liuzhou South Railway Station and Passenger Technical Station

Project Background

In non‑centralized railway areas, turnouts are widely distributed, and traditional management relies on manual locking and unlocking, leading to inefficiencies, difficulty in monitoring their status, and missing operation records. Liuzhou South Station has a dedicated line turnout leading to an oil depot, which involves the transportation of hazardous materials and thus places extremely high demands on turnout safety management. Meanwhile, Liuzhou Passenger Technical Service Station, as a facility for passenger car maintenance and overhaul, experiences frequent shunting operations, requiring real-time feedback on turnout status to support scheduling and plan formulation. To enhance the level of intelligent turnout management, Liuzhou South Station and Liuzhou Passenger Technical Service Station initiated the construction of intelligent turnout management systems for non‑centralized areas in 2019 and 2022, respectively, with Guilin Spepc Technology leveraging… Intelligent turnout lock and Wireless Networking Technology We have undertaken two projects in succession.

(Liuzhou South Railway Station) (Liuzhou Passenger Technical Service Station)

Monitoring equipment

The two projects both adopt the same technical architecture, with a total of:

• Intelligent turnout lock : 21 sets (including 7 at Liuzhou South Station and 14 at Liuzhou Passenger Technical Service Station), installed on turnout actuators and hand levers in non‑centralized areas. The smart locks feature a high‑security electronic cylinder and status sensors, supporting multiple unlocking methods such as RFID card swiping and remote commands. Each lock has a unique identification code and automatically records the time of unlocking, the operator, the locking status, and other relevant information, enabling electronic closed-loop management of turnout operations.

• Wireless gateway : Three sets (one at Liuzhou South Station and two at Liuzhou Passenger Technical Service Station), employing LoRa wireless communication technology to provide coverage for all smart switches in the station’s non‑centralized areas. The gateway uses 4G or a railway‑dedicated network to transmit switch status data in real time to the station management platform, while also receiving authorization commands from the platform to enable remote locking/unlocking control and status monitoring.

• Management platform The station dispatcher can use the platform to view in real time the current status of each turnout lock (locked/opened/faulty), its historical operation records, and electronic fence alarms. The Liuzhou Passenger Technical Station platform is integrated with the dispatch system to help the dispatcher optimize shunting plan scheduling.

Implementation Effectiveness

• Liuzhou South Railway Station Following the system’s deployment, switch management on the oil depot’s dedicated railway line has achieved a qualitative leap: operators can unlock switches by swiping a card or via remote authorization, significantly boosting operational efficiency while effectively preventing oversight in locking and unlocking. This ensures robust safety safeguards for the transportation of hazardous materials.

• Liuzhou Passenger Technical Station : Dispatchers can monitor switch statuses in real time via the platform and pre‑schedule shunting routes, eliminating the time‑consuming on‑site verification step and significantly improving operational efficiency. Meanwhile, all operation records are automatically archived, providing a digital foundation for performance evaluation and accident investigation.

The successful implementation of the two projects has validated the applicability of Spepc Technology’s intelligent turnout management system for non‑centralized areas across various scenarios, providing a replicable model for the intelligent upgrading of turnouts in non‑centralized areas under the Nanning Railway Bureau.