Rome's main train station -the "Roma Termini" was built in 1867 and received its illustrious inauguration by the Pope Pio IX. Over the years the Roma Termini has become a public record of Italy's own history in the 20th Century.
The station manages more than 400,000 passengers each day (around a 150 million passengers a year) from a 225,000-m² site in the heart of Rome. Their new Command & Control Room would provide remote traffic control, regulation, diagnostics, security and emergency control - along with general travel information for the public.
Christie's GraphXMASTER DLV1280 digital projectors provide visualization of the system's and station's operation, which monitors all train movements at the station - more than 600 trains per day, every day of the year. Ansaldo developed the software controlling train circulation.
Maurizio Monty, Technical Services Manager at the Rome Termini describes the operations of the ACS, 'The system recognizes free rails and symbolizes them through a continuous white line. Then the train moves along the itinerary and the light becomes intermittent. When the green light is given to the train, the lines appearing and symbolizing itinerary and train become red. The system recognizes that the itinerary is free and that there are no converging train movements and commands the lights which allow the train to exit or enter the station.'
On the left of the display wall, a portion of the screens is given over to represent the general condition of the rail network in the Rome area. The system acquires trains coming from outside the Rome area and logs this movement with all other stations on the national network.
The same system passed information to the Public Information System and displayed for passengers, where each train can be identified through its official designation. The diagnostics part of the system is physically situated on a higher level within the ACS, together with the Public Information System. A single person can operate the entire system, and from this upper level it is possible to take immediate action on any problem regarding trains' movements and itineraries within the station.
Monti says, 'The major advantage of today's visualization is evident in its superior visual quality, crucial to an accurate management of the station. Moreover, a single projector can be easily substituted, while older visualization systems often resulted in an entire system reconfiguration. The definitive version of this Command and Control Room will be finalized towards the summer of the current year (2001) because some track installations will be prolonged and some new tracks will be built.'