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Direct Traffic Control (DTC) is an electronic authority system of safeworking used to direct rail traffic movements in parts of Queensland Rail’s regional network. DTC operates on the principle of absolute block working which allows only one rail traffic movement on any one block at any one time. This is achieved by the Network Control Officer transferring ownership of a block or blocks to the Rail Traffic Crew. After the Rail Traffic has vacated a block or blocks, the Rail Traffic Crew transfers ownership of the block(s) back to the Network Control Officer.

The DTC system comprises of networked computers at each of the regional Network Control Centres, and a stand-alone in-cab computer, referred to as a Driver Workstation, on-board the Rail Traffic. The DTC system generates codes which are then verbally exchanged between the Network Control Officer and the Rail Traffic Crew. These codes are embedded with the DTC authority information. As the codes are exchanged, the Rail Traffic Crew and Network Control Officer manually enter the codes into their respective workstations. Once the codes have been entered, the DTC software interprets the authority details embedded in the codes and displays the authority information on each workstation for final confirmation between the Rail Traffic Crew and Network Control Officer.

The current method of verbally exchanging and manually entering codes creates limitations on the frequency at which authorities can be issued. To improve the efficiency of the system, a method to automatically exchange the codes between the Controllers and Drivers workstations shall be developed.