Patent ID: 7502671

Claim:
A railway system, comprising at least one track with at least two rails, a plurality of railway signaling devices for controlling track-bound vehicles moving along the rails, and a plurality of safety devices associated with the railway signaling devices in one-to-one correspondence and each having a unique identifier, with two directly adjacent safety devices exchanging data bidirectionally via the rails, wherein the data are exchanged sequentially step-by-step in alternating transmit and receive cycles, wherein a portion of the data includes an identifier of an originating one of the plurality of safety devices, useful information, and an identifier of a destination one of the plurality of safety devices, wherein when the data are forwarded, a respective first of the plurality of safety devices transmits the data to a directly following second of the plurality of safety devices in the direction of the destination safety device, with the second safety device receiving the data, storing the data and returning the data to the first safety device, and wherein the first safety device compares the returned data with the originally transmitted data and confirms to the second safety device agreement between the originally transmitted and the returned data.