Virgin Trains to link IT systems

Virgin Trains is planning a three-phase project to integrate staff and train management systems.

From next month, phase one will see the integration of existing crew planning and train management databases. Phases two and three will see the rollout and integration of a remote sign-on application for Virgin staff, due to go live in November.

Using the system, the company hopes to have a full picture of which employees are working on which shifts, their location and the train to which they are assigned.

“We will be able to see at a glance if they have signed on at the required time, so if necessary we can quickly take action to cover any shifts,” said Virgin Trains’ head of IT Francis Jellings.

“Cross-referencing the data also means that we will be able to have visibility of the impact of any possible delays on other shifts.”

Virgin Trains is using virtualisation to consolidate its server estate and reduce its number of applications from 500 to 130. But it will not run the train and staff management systems on a virtualised environment because of support issues.

“Some of our systems are railway-specific and we have to ensure stability, so we would not virtualise them unless they are supported by the software vendors,” said Jellings.

After the integration is complete, projects that may follow next year include the introduction of PDAs for drivers, train crew and station teams.

The train operator is also working on the next release of its customer information platform, an upgrade of existing Network Rail software.

The platform will be adjusted to accommodate data on timetable changes and engineering works which is currently sent to stations from Virgin Trains via a manual system.

“We are connecting systems to speed up information access and automate the data transmission process on train running and any timetable changes, so announcers have better information to help out customers,” said Jellings.