The NSW State Rail Authority (SRA) is establishing a $17 million virtual reality and simulation centre for staff training which is set to go live in October.
The centre, which is part of a five-year contract with Silicon Graphics, is the largest of its kind in Australia and will be used to simulate rail operations for 6000 staff including train drivers, guards and station managers.
Training scenarios might include incidents such as breakdowns, flooded or obstructed track situationsand driving in adverse weather conditions, or dealing with a train entering a station on fire.
Screens for the virtual reality centre will run from a single Onyx 3400 system containing 24 CPUs and six graphic pipes.
The NSW rail network provides more than 280 million passenger trips a year.