This paper presents the effect of voltage limiting devices (VLD) operation on the rail
potential and stray current in DC railway system. The objective of the study is to simulate
and consider the variation in the rail potential and the generated stray current at the VLD
installed location while the train is operated under normal conditions. In the study, 3
factors are selected for the simulation i.e., time duration of VLD operation, variation of
the running rail resistance, and variation of the ground resistance. According to the
simulation results, the operating time of VLD affects the duration of suppressing the rail
potential, and the stray current can possibly increase to a surprising value during the VLD
operation. The running rail resistance significantly affects the rail potential and stray
current. Moreover, the variation in rail resistance may affect the operating time duration
when the rail potential exceeds the threshold of VLD. The resistance of ground system
has a slight effect on rail potential while it still affects significantly on the stray current.