One of this year’s exhibitors at Train & Rail is Transrail. They work with IT systems linked to trains and the rail industry and their main purpose is to improve communication between trains and traffic management in order to create a better flow of traffic with higher traffic capacity and savings as a result.
We spoke to Per Leander, CTO of Transrail Sweden, about their participation at this year’s Train & Rail.
What kind of company is Transrail and what do you do?
We have a background in consulting in railways and started in 1995 so it is a few years ago. We then also had IT as part of the business. In 2016, we decided to basically close down the consulting business and invest in a self-developed IT system that we call CATO and which is about traffic control and how to run trains.
CATO stands for Computer Aided Train Operation and deals with the digitalization of rail traffic.
We came to the conclusion that of all the issues, from the nuts and bolts to the politics, that we have been working on over the years, traffic management and the running of the trains themselves was one of the most important for the efficient and better use of the railways.
The traffic management we have in Sweden, and have had for many years, is old-fashioned and primitive, which means that we do not use our infrastructure efficiently.
In this area, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit through digitization. This led us to enter the field of -C-DAS, Connected Driver Advisory. CATO, which we developed in collaboration with the Swedish Transport Administration and LKAB, is actually the first such system in the world. It connects traffic management to the trains so that drivers constantly receive up-to-date information on how they should drive to match the current traffic plan. This makes it possible to react well to any disruptions and not make the situation worse.
Why have you chosen to participate in Train & Rail 2025?
We have been to a lot of conferences and fairs over the years, both in Sweden and abroad. Among other things, we were a visitor at Train & Rail 2023, where we were active in discussions with exhibitors and people on site.
Now we felt it was simply time to participate as exhibitors.
What is your objective with Train & Rail?
It is simply to spread awareness of the importance and value of what we do.
There is a lot of focus on rail maintenance and building new railways. And that is good, but long-term and expensive. But to do something about this with the train traffic itself is in the general lobby noise very slow to get, even though it is both fast and cheap.
Then, of course, we want to attract new customers to our technology. So there will of course be a lot of invitations in connection with such an arrangement from our side.
What is the most important issue from your perspective for the future of railways and how are you currently working on this issue?
As I mentioned earlier, there are two things that we consider to be the most important. Firstly, there is the very strategic issue of traffic organization, the Swiss concept of Bahn 2000 for the entire journey applied in Sweden, and secondly, this with traffic control and train traffic.
Specifically for us, it is mostly the CATO system that we are working on to support railway companies and transport buyers. It is a way to get more trains on the existing track, reduce energy consumption, increase punctuality, reduce costs and a whole range of other benefits.
What do you want from industry colleagues and policy makers to enable society to meet the demand, financial constraints and climate goals of future rail transport?
It is clear that the focus is on a Swedish Bahn 2000.
And I would like to say that politicians are also giving directives to the Swedish Transport Administration to develop the digitization of traffic management so that this type of support system for traffic and train operation can be used and that it can be made to work together.
Both of these areas have huge potential.