HIT Rail's Hermes VPN is used as reliable, powerfull and secure communication platform for data transmission applications between European railway companies. The Hermes network is used for all types of traffic, from file transfer, through time critical on-line transactions up to video-conference pilot. It is used for bilateral peer-to-peer applications as well for several central applications. Some companies use it also to link their offices abroad together. The list of the most important and emerging applications is given below per railway activity sector:
a) Passenger transport
- Electronic reservations (application 01 based on UIC Leaflet 918-1) is used for seat, couchette and berths bookings and electronic production of travel documents directly between "national" reservation systems. Presently 13 major passenger railway undertakings run this application.
b) Freight transport
- Freight train preadvice (application 30 based on UIC leaflet 404-2). For each train (or group of wagons), crossing a frontier of two adjacent countries, a train consist preadvice message (details about the train, its wagons and consignments) is sent from the transferror railway to the transferree railway. This is one of the most common applications, used by 18 cargo and/or infrastructure companies.
- ISR (application 31) is central system, developed and run by RAILDATA. It ensures concentration and exchange information about movements of freight wagons (both loaded and empty) in international traffic through a common central platform. Already 14 railway undertakings report wgon events to ISR.
- Wagon search (application 38) enables bilateral dialogue for localisation of a wagon aborad. Query about specific wagon number(s) is responded with actual position of the vehicle (in station or in train). Although it is being replaced by ISR, still 9 companies support wagon search.
- ORFEUS (application 40.1) is other RAILDATA's central system. It serves for consignment data exchange between freight railway undertakings. Already 10 companies make use of ORFEUS as first step towards electronic consignment note.
- Other alternative for CIM consignment and CUV wagon note data exchange is bilateral application (40.3, based on Frachtbriefe message). It it presently used by 6 companies already.
- UseIT (application 43) application was designed by the UIC Combined Transport Group (CTG) for monitoring of international container (intermodal) trains.
c) Infrastructure domain
- Europtirails (EOPTS, application 20.0) is central application, operated by RNE (Rail Net Europe). It consists of Central server in Rome and Working Stations at each member infrastructure manager. It supports traffic management on international corridors through monitoring of international trains from origin to destination. Train status information is reported using messages based on UIC 407-1 leaflet. 7 infrastructure managers are connected to this system already.
- Train running forecast (application 20-1) message is sent from one infrastructure manager to the next one manager upon departure from or movement past agreed reporting points or prior to reaching the first reporting point if, owing to a delay, the train has reached the bilaterally agreed initial running time.
d) Other applications
- Several companies use the Hermes VPN also for internal purposes, in example to link their offices abroad together (e.g. Eurostar, RMF and SNCF).
- Other example of Hermes use is replacement for former dedicated line for link to hosting site (e.g. gateway between CFL and SNCF).
- VPN is used also for connection of remote terminals of several EPA partner railways to the DB's system. It ensures seat reservation (similar to application 01), while the EPA members train resources are hosted in DB's reservation system KURS.
- Hermes VPN is also partly used for the new ENEE (application 70) for UIC's central reference file for railway locations (maintenance and distribution).