At 18:47 on July 29th local time, after 3 hours and 37 minutes of intense efforts,CRSC completed replacement work for the traffic control systems at Nairobi South station， junction of the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway and Nairobi-Malaba Railway, upgrading Kenya's first railway hub. This established connectivity of the traffic control systems, and enabled networked operation of the two railways.
The Mombasa-Nairobi Railway and Nairobi-Malaba Railway are Kenya's first and second new railways in past hundred years, both built by CRSC with Chinese standards and considered as backbones of Eastern Africa's railway network. For their networked operation and unified dispatching, CRSC needed to upgrade the control & dispatching systems of the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway and connect their control systems at Nairobi South station. As this work would have extensive impacts and high technical requirements, the CTC system of the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway had to be disused, and the operation of the railway and inland container port of Nairobi suspended during project execution. Thus, CRSC's Nairobi-Malaba project team only had 4 hours and one chance to ensure train arrival at Nairobi South station at 20:05 local time.
Attaching great importance to this project, CRSC's project team conducted work planning and plan optimization, and performed software coding & simulation testing and equipment installation beforehand. Since June 1st, 2019, it utilized the daily maintenance window of 2 hours for on-site cable laying and existing equipment survey, making full preparations for replacement work. At 15:10 on July 29th local time, at the order of line blocking, four teams took immediate actions for wiring removal and interlocking, monitoring & CTC software replacement, completing the whole task of replacement and testing 23 minutes ahead of schedule.
The connection of the traffic control systems laid a solid foundation for that of the communication & information systems of the two railways and their integrated testing & commissioning. For the Nairobi-Malaba Railway, equipment installation and debugging have been completed at five stations, including Nairobi Terminus, Suswa and Nachu, integrated testing & commissioning will be started, and revenue service is expected this October. Next, CRSC will push ahead to ensure its on-schedule opening. Once completed, it will achieve networked operation with the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway, and connectivity with Uganda's railway network, greatly reducing cross-border logistics and transport costs between the two countries and further promoting connectivity and integration of Eastern Africa.