Case Study: Siemens Industry Solutions Division achieves zero‑downtime, countrywide rail control upgrades with Stratus Technologies

Keeping Belgian Railways Operational And Safe

Infrabel, Belgium’s national railway infrastructure manager, together with Siemens and Stratus, faced the challenge of modernizing the country’s train control systems without disrupting operations. They needed to replace 27 legacy control servers and add five more while working within limited maintenance windows (90-minute slots twice a week) and a strict one-hour downtime target per location to preserve safety and continuous service.

Siemens project‑managed a phased migration to Stratus V Series servers hosting the EBP operator interface, preparing new machines in parallel, preloading software and configuration, and copying only essential logs at switchover. The carefully rehearsed process cut each upgrade to under 60 minutes, delivering 31 upgraded systems with zero customer impact, improved performance and reliability, and headroom for future functionality and larger control zones.

Siemens Industry Solutions Division

Erik Devriendt

Senior Consultant