Redesigning a station master's control panel

The moment

Indian Railways employs over 1.2 million people, among them 18,000 station masters who keep trains apart. The system is reliable, but human error has been linked to up to 35% of rail accidents.

This was our Human Computer Interaction project at IIITDM Jabalpur, done by a team of five. The brief was to find ways to make railway operations more efficient and effective, using design and HCI principles.

The problem

We visited the control room at Madan Mahal station. Controls and displays from 1958 to today sat side by side, in a dozen configurations.

several phones and a radio, and no telling which one is ringing
thin buttons that fingers slip off, and an unguarded emergency button
constant standing and walking between panel, log desk and block signals

A hand pressing narrow buttons on an old railway control panel — The old panel: narrow buttons, small labels.

A signalling board with a station layout and many small indicator lights — A signalling board of the kind the panel is built around.

A floor plan of the Madan Mahal control room: signal control panel, block signals, table with phones, register, chair, radio and washroom — The Madan Mahal control room, sketched to scale. We noted humidity, noise, disturbances and emergency needs.

Every job in the room runs through four things, and each sits in a different place:

A signal control panel with a station layout and lit route lines — Control panel. Allocates tracks to incoming trains and signals the loco-pilot.

Two wooden block instruments with dials — Block instrument. Tells nearby stations whether a track is occupied.

A mobile radio and two handheld radios — Radio. Reaches ground personnel and loco-pilots.

A desk telephone with a coiled cord — Telephones. Reach nearby stations, up the line and down.

We broke the work down by task. Each one has its own knowledge, feedback and problems. A few that stood out:

the upper and lower needles on a block instrument look alike, and nothing tells a train coming from a train going
the alarm for a departure adds noise on top of the phones
writing down train numbers by hand brings fatigue, mistakes and no way to rewrite
the station master sits to write and stands to work the panel, and the block signals are placed far away, outside the line of sight
departure is understood only by the sound of the horn

The people matter as much as the equipment. Training takes three days. A station master cannot leave in a medical emergency without a replacement, and there is no way to tell colleagues.

What I tried

We mapped every task: trains entering and leaving, route allotment, block signals, and the knowledge each one needs. Then we split the work between people and machines, such as scheduling, tracking, signalling and communication, and asked what a machine could take off the station master.

The tasks and the room gave us six problem areas. For each one we wrote down what was going wrong and a way to fix it:

CommunicationSeveral phones cause noise, and someone on the phone can miss the radio. So: put the phones near the panel, and digitise communication so there is a record.
Departure of trainsThe only confirmation a train is leaving is the horn. So: add cameras, so the train's position shows on the panel.
PositionSitting to write the log, standing to work the panel, and walking between them, with displays in different quadrants. So: bring every display and control onto the panel, ordered by how often and in what order they are used.
Block line signalsThey sit far away, outside the line of sight. So: place them with the control panel.
The control panelThin buttons that slip, red collars that look like signal buttons, an unguarded system-failure button, and far-off buttons. So: thicker buttons that give haptic feedback on anti-slip material, transparent collars, a cover for the system-failure button, and a compressed layout.
PeopleThree days of training, no relief in a medical emergency, no break room, and a manual mode run on flags and whistles. So: a longer probation for training, and an emergency button that tells the assistants or the station manager.

Brainstorming gave four concepts:

One: rearrange the room so the panel, phones and block instrument sit where the station master can reach them
Two: one communication interface in place of the separate phones
Three: a curved control panel with an emergency button, colour and text coding, and every communication device on it
Four: a box with slots for four phones and a hanger for the walkie-talkie, so each has a place

We refined the curved panel and the integrated communication station into one console.

The turn

One curved panel the station master runs while seated, with a single communication interface that replaces the phones and radio and keeps a transcript.

We sized it with anthropometric calculations: a desk height of 80 cm, a visual cone of 30 to 45 degrees, and arm reach that sets the length of each section of the curve. Then we modelled it in 3D to see how the form worked around a seated person.

A top view of the curved panel with a seated figure, its arm reach and visual cone, and measurements of 800, 500, 517 and 697 millimetres — Reach and visual cone, top view. The curve follows the arms.

The design

A concept, not a product. We built scale models from recycled materials. The pictures here start from my 3D model of the panel and were redone with an AI image model for a real-world look. The shape, the layout and the position of every control come from the 3D model.

The redesigned curved control panel with a station master in headphones seated at it, three screens above, and a printed track diagram with labelled push-buttons on the desk — The panel from behind and to the right. Everything the station master needs sits within reach.

A top view of the curved panel: the printed board, the log book on the shelf, the mouse pad, and the station master seated with his forearms resting on the desk — From above. The curve follows the reach of the arms.

The control desk in a plain room, seen from the left, with the station master seated at it — In the room, from the left.

The station master from behind at the curved desk, with the printed board, the log table and the track diagram on the screens — From behind. Board, screens and controls are in one view.

Each feature answers something we saw in the control room:

Bigger buttons with an indent, a colour and a texture, so any finger can press them. The old narrow buttons needed a precise index finger, and fingers slipped
Haptic feedback once a route is confirmed, with sound and light as well
A reconfirmation button. Without it, someone who locked a route by mistake waited 15 seconds after pressing cancel, and kept pressing until the lock sound played
Screens for CCTV, station logs and a live map, showing signal status, electrical voltage and connection strength, and block section faults
A covered emergency button that sends an alarm to the officials next door, so a replacement can come quickly
Headphones tied to the railway control line, for clearer hearing and less noise
A place for log books and stationery on the desk

A close view of the printed board: four coloured track lines, push-buttons with metal collars and short labels, and a hand resting on the panel — Buttons are larger, indented and coded by colour, with a printed label each.

The red emergency button in a white ring, with a hinged clear safety cover standing behind it and an EMERGENCY label — The emergency button sits under a clear cover.

The communication interface puts the block instrument and the phone in one place. It borrows from modern desk phones with several lines: tap the line you want to take. There is no need to keep track of which phone or radio is ringing. Up line and down line, each with Train on line, Line closed and Line clear. A dial pad. A DRM button. A button that turns calls into text for the record.

The communication interface on the desk next to the emergency button: Up Line and Down Line status buttons, a display, a dial pad, a DRM button and call buttons — The integrated communication interface.

We then built the panel in cardboard, with bottle caps for buttons, to check the form and the placement of the controls.

A cardboard scale model of the curved control panel on a tiled floor — Scale model, cardboard and recycled bottle caps.

Side view of the cardboard scale model, with a tilted desk surface — The tilted surface keeps buttons in the line of sight.

What changed

The old desk was cluttered, and part of it was out of reach. The new one is simpler and curved, so the station master can work the panel without standing, which cuts fatigue.

The panel is a concept, so nothing was measured in a real station. What the work shows is on paper and in the model: the controls fit a seated reach, the block signals and phones come to the person, and the emergency path is no longer a walk to find help.

My part was the field research and task analysis, and the 3D model, renders and ergonomics diagrams that sized the curve.

What I’d do next

The decision I would defend is the reconfirmation button. It is small, but it fixes a failure we saw: with no confirmation, a wrong route took 15 seconds to cancel, and people kept pressing until the lock sound played.

What I would test first, with real station masters: whether the repeat presses stop, and how long it takes to correct a wrong route.

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Indian Railways · Control panel

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