Control of rail vehicles

Abstract

A decentralized control of rail vehicles that run in alternating directions on a single-track route, e.g., between two train stations by way of an exclusive right (token). A storage device is arranged at each end of the route, for instance an RFID unit. Only a single exclusive right exists for the route. The exclusive right is either stored in one of the two storage units or carried along by a rail vehicle that is traveling on the route. In the latter case, an additional rail vehicle is effectively prevented from traveling on the route, because none of the storage units can provide the exclusive right, which is being transported between the storage units by the rail vehicle and is occupied by the rail vehicle. The novel concept creates an efficient possibility of decentralized train protection and thus can be implemented significantly more economically than existing centralized train safety approaches.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.