ICL Plc’s Enterprise Systems and its principal subcontractors Dassault AT SA of France and British Rail Computing unveiled the computerised departure control system that has been developed under a contract worth around 5m for the Channel Tunnel passenger rail service at Waterloo station: the passenger check-in gates each contain a personal computer, 10 VGA monitor and ATB2 ticket reader typically used in airline passenger boarding control; Dassault is responsible for the design and supply of the gates while British Rail Computing is producing application software; the tickets will be able to hold information on seat allocation, special dietary requirements and special facilities needed such as a wheelchair; the majority of the computing units in the departure system in the UK and in Paris are 80386-based MS-DOS computers, each connected to a local network using Ethernet, while in Brussels Digital Equipment Corp VMS severs are being used and the desk systems there will operate VMS workstations; the check in desk subsystem handles the transfer of passengers between trains and those without machine- readable tickets, and will be able to print the special tickets as well; the terminal subsystem handles information relating to the efficient operation of the trains; each passenger can be processed in 10 seconds with the new tickets.
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