VEHICLE ACCELERATION MEASUREMENT ON A 21ST CENTURY METRO

Following on from the successful use of vehicle acceleration measurement in connection with track maintenance activity planning on London Underground's Central Line, it was recognised that in order to gain additional benefits the use of expensive human resource had to be reduced to a minimum. Routine faults should be subject to automatic identification and logging allowing the maintenance engineers' time to be spent more effectively, dealing with the more difficult aspects of railway maintenance intervention. The initial measurement system Mactrack could not readily lend itself to additional processing nor could it be linked dynamically to the Automated Video Inspection (AVI) system. The challenge facing the development team was to produce a system that operated on a modern software operating platform (Windows 95 or higher) thus allowing effective systems integration meeting the objective of minimising human interaction for run of the mill faults. In achieving the objective a system that could be remotely activated in a service train became the goal with the potential to offer real time data supply at some time in the future. In order to realise the possibility of remote activation, a second tranche of work ensued seeking to facilitate the accurate location of a train that could be anywhere on the line. This aspect considered use of internal train systems but a magnetic marking system has been adopted. Differential GPS has been considered and may ultimately replace the markers in open section use but the underground or tube sections will require some form of fixed position marking. Another aspect of the system is the provision of rail roughness measures which up until this point required a separate equipment set, the combination of both facets of asset management with no necessity to compromise the passenger railway will become increasingly popular. The potential to include digital cameras to capture individual fault events is also discussed. For the covering abstract see ITRD E123713.

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/isbn/0947644458
• Corporate Authors:

  ENGINEERING TECHNICS PRESS

  46 CLUNY GARDENS
  EDINBURGH,   United Kingdom  EH10 6BN
• Authors:
  • MCANAW, H E
• Publication Date: 2001

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: 7 p.
• Serial:
  • PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE RAILWAY ENGINEERING 2001, HELD LONDON, UK, 30 APRIL - 1 MAY 2001 - CDROM
  • Publisher: ENGINEERING TECHNICS PRESS

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Conferences; Defects; Equipment; Global Positioning System; Maintenance; Photography; Railroad tracks; Railroad trains
• ITRD Terms: 8525: Conference; 5238: Defect (tech); 3674: Equipment; 9126: Global positioning system; 3847: Maintenance; 6751: Photography; 1062: Railway track; 1268: Train
• Subject Areas: Maintenance and Preservation; Railroads; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00985528
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transport Research Laboratory
• ISBN: 0-947644-45-8
• Files: ITRD
• Created Date: Feb 4 2005 12:00AM