Graceful extensibility has been recently introduced and can be defined as the ability of a system to extend its capacity to adapt when surprise events challenge its boundaries. It provides basic rules that govern adaptive systems. Railway transportation systems can be considered cyber-physical systems that comprise interacting digital, analog, physical, and human components engineered for safe and reliable railway transport. This enables autonomous driving, new functionalities to achieve higher capacity, greater safety, and real-time health monitoring. New rolling stock introductions require continuous adaptations to meet the challenges of these complex railway systems as an introduction takes several years to complete and deals with changing stakeholder demands, new technologies, and technical constraints which cannot be fully predicted in advance. To sustain adaptability when introducing new rolling stock, the theory of graceful extensibility might be valuable but needs further empirical testing to be useful in the field. This study contributes by assessing the proto-theorems of graceful extensibility in a case study in the railway industry by means of adopting pattern-matching analysis. The results of this study indicate that the majority of theoretical patterns postulated by the theory are corroborated by the data. Guidelines are proposed for further operationalization of the theory in the field. Furthermore, case results indicate the need to adopt management approaches that accept indeterminism as a complement to the prevailing deterministic perspective, to sustain adaptability and deal effectively with surprise events. As such, this study may serve other critical asset introductions dealing with cyber-physical systems in their push for sustained adaptability.

最近引入了优美的可扩展性，它可以定义为系统在突发事件挑战其边界时扩展其适应能力的能力。它提供了管理自适应系统的基本规则。铁路运输系统可以被视为网络物理系统，包括相互作用的数字，模拟，物理和人工组成部分，旨在为安全可靠的铁路运输而设计。这可以实现自动驾驶，新功能以实现更高的容量，更高的安全性以及实时的健康状况监控。引入新的机车车辆需要不断进行调整，以应对这些复杂的铁路系统的挑战，因为引入机车需要花费数年的时间才能完成并处理不断变化的利益相关方需求，新技术，以及无法事先完全预测的技术限制。为了在引入新的机车车辆时保持适应性，宽限度可扩展性理论可能很有价值，但需要进一步的经验测试才能在该领域中使用。通过采用模式匹配分析，评估了铁路行业案例研究中优美可扩展性的原定理，从而为这项研究做出了贡献。这项研究的结果表明，该理论所假设的大多数理论模式都得到了数据的证实。为该理论在该领域的进一步操作提出了指南。此外，案例结果表明，有必要采用接受不确定性作为主流确定性观点的补充的管理方法，保持适应性并有效应对突发事件。因此，本研究可能会为处理网络物理系统的其他重要资产引入提供持续的适应性。