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OSRD: Open-Source Railway Designer

osrd.fr

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Re: OSRD: Open-Source Railway Designer

#21

Post by emersion »

cbsmith wrote: post #5

I know I don't understand the domain at all , but I'm surprised that in this day and age you'd want a distributed system to do railway design. What aspect of the problem makes it unsuitable for running in a single process?

The database needs to be shared between multiple actors: several teams of multiple people working in different companies. For instance, a team may be working on a single project such as a new railway or a large timetable change. Another example would be multiple freight companies requesting new routes.

Additionally, the UI contains complicated elements such as custom maps with the railway network and custom graphs to visualize trains. There is a large ecosystem to implement this kind of stuff via Web technologies. A webapp also removes the need to distribute an installable binary on many different platforms (some may be quite restricted due to company policies) and many different machines (there are many users, see above).

Note that the system uses a client-server architecture but isn't really distributed.

Re: OSRD: Open-Source Railway Designer

#22

Post by javilovesmambo »

ur-whale wrote: post #12

I would have felt a tad better if such tool had originated in Switzerland rather than France. The railway system in Switzerland is far, far more reliable, far more central to the Swiss economy and proportionally (Switzerland is smaller than France) services much more of the country in terms of both geographical reach and service frequency. But ... credit where credit is due, kudos indeed to the Frenchies for building…

You can put it on a different way, the Swiss have no use case for such a software since everything is running fine. On the other hand, the French need the solution and are more experienced dealing with railway traffic problems.

Re: OSRD: Open-Source Railway Designer

#23

Post by Eckter2 »

sakjur wrote: post #8

This tool was the subject of a FOSDEM talk this year, which is available as a video on FOSDEM’s website: https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2052-open...

If you're interested, there's actually several other team members who made talks about different parts of the project in the "railway and open transport" track

Bending geographic maps for enhanced railway space-time diagrams: https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/track/railways-and-open-tra...

MARECO algorithm: how to drive a train using the least amount of energy: https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2650-mare...

Railway signaling: detecting conflicts in a complex world: https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2665-rail...

And last year:

Automated short-term train planning in OSRD: https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/rot_osrd/

OpenStreetMap, one geographic database to rule them all?: https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/rot_osm/

Re: OSRD: Open-Source Railway Designer

#24

Post by p_l »

PetitPrince wrote: post #19
ur-whale wrote: post #12

I would have felt a tad better if such tool had originated in Switzerland rather than France. The railway system in Switzerland is far, far more reliable, far more central to the Swiss economy and proportionally (Switzerland is smaller than France) services much more of the country in terms of both geographical reach and service frequency. But ... credit where credit is due, kudos indeed to the Frenchies for building…

There's a similar-but-different tool developed by SBB CFF FFS[1], it's even mentioned in the documentation of OSRD[2]. Both tools operate at different scope, if we're to believe the documentation (OSRD is micro, Netzgrafik is macro). [1]: https://github.com/SchweizerischeBundesbahnen/netzgrafik-edi... [2]: https://osrd.fr/en/docs/explanation/netzgrafik-editor/

There are also similar, commercial closed source systems from SISCOG[1][2]

[1] https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/ [2] https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/products/#railnode

Re: OSRD: Open-Source Railway Designer

#25

Post by [deleted] »

solardev wrote: post #6

This looks like a serious tool for real professionals to use. Cool! I wish they had some screenshots or videos of the process. In the meantime, if anyone's looking for gamified railroad-building (just for fun), check out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1124180/Rail_Route/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1134710/NIMBY_Rails/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/503940/Railway_Empire/ Or several more: https://gith…

[deleted]

Re: OSRD: Open-Source Railway Designer

#26

Post by cbsmith »

emersion wrote: post #21
cbsmith wrote: post #5

I know I don't understand the domain at all , but I'm surprised that in this day and age you'd want a distributed system to do railway design. What aspect of the problem makes it unsuitable for running in a single process?

The database needs to be shared between multiple actors: several teams of multiple people working in different companies. For instance, a team may be working on a single project such as a new railway or a large timetable change. Another example would be multiple freight companies requesting new routes. Additionally, the UI contains complicated elements such as custom maps with the railway network and custom graphs to…

> Note that the system uses a client-server architecture but isn't really distributed.

Yeah, I kind of agree. The thing is, it's orchestrating multiple containers to do the job. I can't figure out why you couldn't just have one container.

Re: OSRD: Open-Source Railway Designer

#27

Post by cbsmith »

solardev wrote: post #7
cbsmith wrote: post #5

I know I don't understand the domain at all , but I'm surprised that in this day and age you'd want a distributed system to do railway design. What aspect of the problem makes it unsuitable for running in a single process?

Do you mean this? https://osrd.fr/en/docs/explanation/containers-architecture/ Could it just be the skillset that government has to? Web devs are a dime a dozen and you can probably find people to maintain/incrementally upgrade parts of it in the future easier than you could find an expert in some desktop GUI language (like .NET or Swift) that would still work after a few years of OS updates.

The web interface I get, but you can stand up a web interface with a single process built with a web server & an embedded database.

Re: OSRD: Open-Source Railway Designer

#28

Post by PetitPrince »

p_l wrote: post #24
PetitPrince wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a similar-but-different tool developed by SBB CFF FFS[1], it's even mentioned in the documentation of OSRD[2]. Both tools operate at different scope, if we're to believe the documentation (OSRD is micro, Netzgrafik is macro). [1]: https://github.com/SchweizerischeBundesbahnen/netzgrafik-edi... [2]: https://osrd.fr/en/docs/explanation/netzgrafik-editor/

There are also similar, commercial closed source systems from SISCOG[1][2] [1] https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/ [2] https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/products/#railnode

OP wanted something developed by the Swiss railways company though (but SISCOG seems to be used by the Dannish, Finnish, Norwegian, Canadian and Catalonian railways).

Re: OSRD: Open-Source Railway Designer

#29

Post by solardev »

cbsmith wrote: post #27
solardev wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean this? https://osrd.fr/en/docs/explanation/containers-architecture/ Could it just be the skillset that government has to? Web devs are a dime a dozen and you can probably find people to maintain/incrementally upgrade parts of it in the future easier than you could find an expert in some desktop GUI language (like .NET or Swift) that would still work after a few years of OS updates.

The web interface I get, but you can stand up a web interface with a single process built with a web server & an embedded database.

That's true. I don't know enough about their stack or use case or users to comment any further though, so I'll refrain from speculating.

Re: OSRD: Open-Source Railway Designer

#30

Post by solardev »

bionade24 wrote: post #15
rob74 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa... this game looks realistic at first glance, with locomotives and carriages modeled on real-world counterparts, but when watching the demo video, the railfan in me immediately starts screaming "No! This is all wrong !" - the track grades are much too steep, the curves much too tight, and that one scene where two freight trains almost collide and then one of them stops dead with a few meters distance to the othe…

Transport Fever 2 has a strong modding community doing virtual model railroading. There are plenty of mods improving vehicle stock, physics and procedures. https://steamcommunity.com/app/1066780/images/ https://www.transportfever.net/

That's really cool! Is it a deeper simulation than games like Cities Skylines?
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