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Always on track

Flytoget is familiar for most people who have travelled between Drammen and Oslo Gardermoen Airport, usually to continue on to another destination. During a normal year, Flytoget transports around 10 percent of all train passengers in Norway. Since Oslo Gardermoen Airport opened in 1998, Flytoget has transported more than 100 million passengers and, at the same time, contributed to getting the amount of people using public transport to and from the airport to well over 70 percent. Passenger numbers increased steadily over the years until COVID-19 brought severe restrictions to air traffic. To increase capacity Flytoget purchased eight brand new, and ultramodern, trainsets from Spain.

Jon Terje Holm is CTO of the Enterprise Asset Management Department at EY Skye. The department provides IT support for operations and maintenance. He has now been tasked with helping Flytoget to keep its promise to its passengers: “Always on track”.

Holm has assisted Flytoget in developing systems that provide full control over operations and maintenance of the new trainsets.

When he talks about model trains, he means something quite different than model trains running on tracks placed on the living room floor. He talks about advanced maps over every little part of the train, digital models that are displayed on screen.

IBM Maximo provides an overview

The model is based on IBM Maximo, a system that Flytoget has already used for many years to manage maintenance and operation on the 16 older trainsets. As the eight new trainsets are a different type, a new model had to be developed. The model is created as a hierarchy of parts of the trains such as wheels, bogies, engines and dampers.

–  “We call it a ‘digital twin’,” explains Holm, and continues, “You can see what a train is comprised of. It is an abstract model of the train, but it is based on a logic that is easy to see. The goal is to be able to check the model against the actual train, to make sure it’s complete and assembled with the right components,” according to Holm.

The model was created to allow the maintenance manager to add in maintenance on a continual basis and other work that is required in future. Train maintenance is highly regulated, with respect to time or the number of kilometres the train has operated.

When developing models of the new trainsets he had close collaboration with a group of different experts from Flytoget, primarily from the engineering department.

–  The job entailed running workshops together with Flytoget to find out what the new trainsets looked like and what maintenance needed to be done on the new trains, so that we could add this into the system.”

One advantage was that Holm already had a great deal of experience from previous work with Flytoget, and trains were nothing new to him.

–  “I know the specialist terminology and how the trainset is constructed,” says Holm.

Work on the model began in 2019 and the model was ready for use the following year. As these were new trains this also involved ground-breaking work.

–  Purchasing new trains is not something one does very often. It is challenging to gain a full overview of how the entire Flytoget organisation works and what is required to operate trains. We must have a complete overview to be able to help them,” explains Holm.

Creating systems to maintain a 236-tonne train that will be tested at speeds of up to 270 kilometres per hour is not a job he takes lightly. A lot can go wrong when a 100-metre-long vehicle glides along the rails, also at a normal speed of 210 kilometres per hour, but what is most important to Flytoget and Holm is passenger safety.

Zero stress

Before the trains were put in operation during the early summer of 2021, each of the eight trainsets was assigned its own “digital twin”. Based on the data that is plotted in, the models will automatically calculate whether a train is given the green light to operate, or if necessary, automatically flag the type of maintenance that must be performed.

There is a high focus on everything being correct and functioning as it should. “We inspect and check that there are no system errors that impact safety and if something does occur, we have to report the deviation to the Norwegian Railway Authority,” explains Holm.