OpenSourceRail develops affordable urban rail and open tools to plan, design, build, operate and renew it, keeping design knowledge, manufacture and repair capability in-country.
The v0.6 reference uses comfort cars on passive steel-wheel bogies, conventional rails and precast concrete. Station propulsion alternatives remain under comparison; no installed architecture or powered length is selected. This is a research and prototype design, without manufacturing or operating release.
Start here: city designs and maps · engineering Workbench · 3D engineering gallery · illustrated reader · detailed platform guide.
Concept. The source-bound vehicle geometry and engineering models carry the detailed geometry and its limits.
| Connected product | What it is for | Available today |
|---|---|---|
| Design and delivery tools | Turn a city brief into alternatives, engineering checks, costs and delivery records | Planning editor, calculated outlines, engineering Workbench and candidate exports |
| Reference railway and manufacturing system | Develop vehicles, stations, civil works, tooling, assembly and repair methods | Physical candidate definitions, CAD/BIM and numerical studies; physical qualification remains open |
| Open GoA4 control software | Develop protection, interlocking, station-led dispatch and train supervision | Rust research software, simulation and formal/method checks; no live railway or safety approval |
Compare the whole installed system: vehicles, stations, civil works, factories, energy, maintenance and service availability. Comfort, safety and accessibility remain requirements.
Local capability includes precasting, fabrication, panels, interiors, wiring, assembly, inspection and repair. Local content requires origin evidence. Open drawings and records let owners change suppliers.
See the adoption path, capabilities and roadmap.
| Step | What to do | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Define the brief | Record demand, routes, access, climate, safety and local capability | City catalogue, planning workspace |
| 2. Compare alternatives | Vary vehicles, propulsion, civil works, service and production under common requirements | Workbench, coordinated design workflow |
| 3. Check service and cost | Calculate journeys, capacity, fleet, energy and low/base/high lifecycle costs | Demand-led outline, cost and delivery method |
| 4. Plan delivery | Inspect CAD/IFC, BOM, process hours, procurement, construction and schedules | Delivery exports, candidate packages |
| 5. Review, build and learn | Validate independently; configure production, commissioning, maintenance and measured feedback | ERPNext/Frappe HR, FUXA/gateway, platform guide |
Revisions update one candidate through geometry, mass, checks, quantities and cost. Missing parts, hours and prices remain unknown or bounded.
Calculation, validation and release are separate. Calculations declare their assumptions. Validation needs physical evidence and independent review; manufacture and operation need their own acceptance.
The priced city and design outlines cover 266 mapped city networks and 1565 lines, plus 112 railway bundles, 54 bodies and 18 civil spans. The Workbench compares original, straighter and rounded square-ring proposals, joins close stop markers into operational complexes, and exposes fleet, manufacturing, construction and fourteen whole-life cost scopes. The local workflow edits and re-costs an outline, then exports a resource-leveled delivery plan and disabled business-system drafts. These are completed calculated outlines under explicit demand, site and rate assumptions; physical approval remains separate.
Start with Baghdad or Samawah for maps, service, fleet, energy, construction resources, costs and finance scenarios. Inspect routes, stations and calculations in the city railway atlas.
In the Workbench, choose a priced city and calculate a scenario. Edit this outline and recalculate changes routes, stops and headways, updating map and figures together. Planning handoffs contain proposals. Site surveys, demand, ground, utilities, power, rescue and physical approval remain project work.
Worked costs: demand-led project, 30 km / 12 station benchmark and project-volume supply comparison. Compare these Class C estimates at equal service and compatible rates.
| Item | Development basis |
|---|---|
| Formation and comfort | Six 17 m cars; 44 fixed seats + two wheelchair places/car; 276 places/train; no planned standing |
| Layout and body | Two passenger doors on one side; aluminium/GFRP architecture, sandwich floor/roof and lightweight interiors |
| Running gear and guideway | Twelve unpowered two-axle bogies, conventional rails and fastenings on concrete; box, twin-beam and U-beam comparisons |
| Propulsion and services | Passive aluminium secondary interface for LIM comparisons; separately sized service batteries, roof solar, HVAC, doors and emergency loads |
| Protection | Continuous onboard ATP, independent mechanical brakes and protected recovery/evacuation arrangements requiring qualification |
| Named service control | 72 km/h launch cap, 120-second headway and 8,280 nominal places/hour/direction; this is a comparison case, not a required operating design |
The reference selector excludes onboard traction motors, traction batteries and permanent magnets. Choose architecture, powered length, acceleration, braking and service per candidate against demand, physical constraints and whole-life cost. Neither 900 m nor 100 m is mandatory.
The current dossier records open mass, force, thermal, stopping, structural and installation evidence. The LIM interface supports comparison with mechanical launch and energy recovery and other launch alternatives.
Research may challenge the reference under the architecture campaign and transport-goal policy, with separate identities and complete system consequences. The former 120-person/car / 14,400 passengers/hour/direction comparison and 160-person/car crowd structural control remain named alternatives; seated service does not remove crowd, evacuation or accidental-load checks.
| Passenger cabin | Modular vehicle assembly |
|---|---|
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| Precast guideway construction | Station LIM comparison |
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The original renders and illustration brief explain the concept. The LIM picture and schematic select no installed system or powered length.
The 3D engineering gallery provides rotatable STL, coloured GLB, editable FreeCAD and STEP models, source identities and export checks.
The detailed launch-shuttle assembly adds bored clevises, a revised pin, hollow frame members, wheel/axle parts, guards and fasteners, with matching component FEM and fabrication estimates. The city price audit explains corrected energy accounts and separate civil-cost alternatives.
| Vehicle and workshop assembly | Rail and running-gear workshop |
|---|---|
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| Capture braking energy | Controlled launch and acceleration |
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| Viaduct erection | Precast manufacture |
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The gallery distinguishes source geometry, equipment envelopes and proposed tooling. CAD agreement does not establish complete installed mass or physical acceptance.
The vehicle parts catalogue breaks a separate six-car detail proposal into 605 named part types and 40 assemblies: bogies, frames, panels, roofs, chairs, doors, glazing, simple LED lighting, couplers and gangways. Browse materials, counted fixings, fabrication and assembly routes, inspection and scoped estimates through the Vehicle parts link in the Workbench. Detailed drawings, installed fit and release evidence remain open.
Candidate exports connect CAD/BIM, BOM, manufacturing, procurement, assembly, civil and controls records. Hours and costs remain provisional. The detailed guide explains process costing, factories, construction and whole-life scope.
ERPNext and Frappe HR provide configurable draft project, purchasing, stock, workforce, manufacturing, quality and maintenance workflows. FUXA and the gateway provide equipment observation, trends, alarms and review-linked lifecycle records through the integration service. Organisations, calendars, masters, equipment bindings and commissioning need configuration. Generated handoffs remain disabled drafts until reviewed.
The current native acceptance scenario has exercised QA, serialized manufacture, installation, gateway defect, outage recovery, repair and independent business review on disposable ERPNext/HR/FUXA services. It uses simulation assets; full workforce assignment, production handback enforcement and physical commissioning remain separate work.
See the capability register for current functions and the platform guide for detailed methods, integration boundaries and research sources.
./install.sh
./osr status
./osr readiness
./osr workbenchSee setup for dependencies. Create and check a planning/factory handoff:
./osr plan compile edits.json --output build/my-plan
./osr plan verify build/my-plan
./osr twin factory-draft compile build/my-plan --output build/factory-plan
./osr twin factory-draft verify build/my-plan build/factory-plan
./osr twin exportedits.json is your proposal. Factory drafts require verified handoffs and remain unreleased. For bounded engineering and publication checks:
./osr design railway plan
./osr design railway run --max-bundles 2 --native-jobs 1
./osr design railway publish
./osr design railway verify
./osr build
./osr verify
./osr book --check
./osr testNative workers need declared FEM/CAD tools and resources; runs retain failures and pending work. ./osr build refreshes publications and drafts. ./osr sim baghdad reports a city-evaluation hold. The UI has no live train-control authority.
Hayder Aziz initiated OpenSourceRail. His research since the early 2000s connects product data management, manufacturing knowledge, open standards and collaborative software, bringing manufacturability and knowledge exchange into conceptual design.
His publications include New Technologies and Standards for Design Knowledge Management in Collaborative Conceptual Design (2003, with James Gao, Paul Maropoulos and Wai Ming Cheung), Open standard, open source and peer-to-peer tools and methods for collaborative product development (2005, Computers in Industry), and Engineering design knowledge management in de-centralised virtual enterprises (2008, Computer-Aided Design and Applications).
OpenSourceRail carries this research into a traceable transport design toolchain. Read the full biography and research context.
Follow CONTRIBUTING, GOVERNANCE and project instructions. Contribute city data, supplier evidence, physical models, manufacturing/repair methods, controls or documentation. Edit sources and regenerate derived artifacts.
For deeper reading: platform guide · architecture · design engine · Rust controls · sourcing evidence · documentation index.
Software uses Apache 2.0, open physical designs use CERN-OHL-S v2, and documentation uses CC-BY-SA 4.0, subject to more-specific and upstream notices. See LICENSE.md and LICENSES/.