of sessions 1 session, full day

Table 4. Core description of ETMET 2010 Game

practice, and all could work with the data supplied.

**5.5 NAU** 

a major disruption under High Frequency Transport

rescheduling, Rolling Stock rescheduling, Platform coordinator, Decentralized network controller Network

frequency timetabling, essentials of communication lines between different offices involved. Stylized passenger flow.

timetabling on paper, time and delays through simple

time-out by the game leader to settle the issues and go back to a state all could agree on. Extremely involved and lively game

Core aspect Description


Gaming simulation has been selected as a tool to try out the concept first in a simulated environment before it will be brought to the control post. During the game the effect of the new concept on goals 1,4 and 5 had to be researched. Table 5 describes the game details.

The main result of the NAU game was empirically based insight in the fundamental consequences of reducing the number of switches used and corridor control on capacity, resilience and robustness. In the old situation, the capacity reduces rapidly as the disturbance level increases. Due to the many switches, many options remain in heavily disturbed situations to continue driving, requiring a mastery level of the train controller. These options cause 'infection' of problems of one corridor to others. When using corridor control in its strict sense, the process remains more manageable with mild to moderate disturbances. But because the control options are limited to the corridors, there comes a moment in the corridor that all capacity is lost, still not affecting the other corridors. There's a tipping point where the limits for a disturbed corridor become unacceptably high. At this tipping point it can help to deviate from the corridor principle. The ideal situation is to control & isolate the corridor as long as possible and use other parts of the infrastructure only when the critical level of disturbance is reached. In other words: you want to cash the potential of corridor control and avoid potential losses. Where the disturbance level is critical, how often this situation occurs and what specific deviations must be allowed, is still open for further research.

In the NAU game modeling we re-used the infrastructure schematic layout and timetabling information that was so successful in the ETMET game. Yet again this proved to immerse the participants in the simulation within a few minutes, and to make them enact their role perfectly. In this post-game evaluation the participants rated their behavior as highly realistic. The only exceptions to this were the network and service controller who both work at the national level. For them there was no game material to play with apart from information derived from the simulated area. This resulted in less emersion and a bit grumpy atmosphere in which they were mocking about the new concept. For the project this proved functional as their comments in the discussion raised important points for the improvement of the concept, but the game play from them was not optimal. Therefore no direct conclusions could be drawn from the interaction between the national and regional level.

Gaming Simulations for Railways:

Core aspect Description

Time model Step-wise.
