Safer Rail Operations: Reactive to Proactive Maintenance Using State-of-the-Art Automated In-service Vehicle-Track Condition Monitoring

Abstract

The railway operators are demanding higher productivity and throughput to meet increasing patronage and changing needs. These coupled with shrinking maintenance windows and tightening of available asset repair budgets necessitate responsive strategies to ensure continued safe operations, service reliability whilst at the same time looking at ways to create greater efficiencies.Increasingly, technology and system approaches are being utilised by leading railway organizations to overcome these challenges and to improve their operations. The Instrumented Revenue Vehicle (IRV) Technology and associated sophisticated automatic data processing system are key technological innovations providing significant benefit to these railway organizations. The IRV is an intelligent automated condition monitoring tool which is integrated into normal railway operations. IRV automatically collects dynamic vehicle performance data and identifies high risk track related defects, and the precise locations of the defects, capable of sending remote data that can be analysed in real time. This paper outlines the IRV technology, and how the shift from reactive to proactive maintenance and operation using new technological innovations, are providing significant benefits to the railway industry. Through the integration of the IRV intelligent, automated condition-monitoring tool, into normal everyday operations, the railway industry has an opportunity to create greater efficiencies, reduce maintenance costs, and to ensure safer operations, whilst at the same time extending asset life.