You can't manage what you can't measure

Need more precise information on your cars and locomotives? Try these sophisticated fault detection systems.

By Marybeth Luczak, Associate Editor

If you plan to retire in 2001, a conservative financial planner may suggest putting half of your savings into growth and income mutual funds. To recommend risking your entire nest egg in aggressive-growth funds-whose dot-com stocks could plummet at any time-could be dangerous to your reserve (and his health). So with more than $60 billion invested in the 1.3 million cars and locomotives that help produce more than $35 billion in freight revenues each year, the railroad industry wants similar investment protection.

Increasingly, railroads and car owners are using fault detection systems to identify early-on such developing faults as wheel wear, changes in oil/hydraulic pressure, and temperature shifts in refrigerated containers. Their aim is to reduce derailments, costly repairs, and lading damage. Information is reported in real time via telephone, fax, pager, or the Internet to dispatchers and train crews who can take action as well as plan future maintenance schedules based on fleet performance. Following is a sampling of the types of equipment suppliers now offer.

ALSTOM
"We are going beyond the black box mentality," says Dan Harris, U.S. new technology products applications engineer for ALSTOM. Fault detection systems from ALSTOM, in partnership with AEA Technology, not only monitor cars for abnormalities, they generate maintenance reports. Using these reports, "car owners can change out components on an as-needed basis instead of performing routine maintenance whether it's needed or not," Harris says.

The WheelChex Wheel Impact Load Detection system is activated when a vehicle passes over strain gauges attached to the rail. The gauges measure vehicle wheel loads and forces. If a high load is detected, an alarm is sent via the Internet to the appropriate personnel, and a camera records the problem car's AEI tag information. Similarly, the VIEW Automated Vehicle Inspection system monitors wheel and brake performance. Since human inspection results can be subjective, this system employs cameras and lasers to analyze each wheel's cross-section and determine wear without taking cars out of service. The data collected will help schedule maintenance and determine what causes certain problems. "For example, if your brake shoes are in good shape, but you're not getting proper braking, this system will narrow down the possibilities of what's wrong," says Harris.

The EngMon Engine Monitoring system combines an onboard computer to monitor train control lines and engine sensor inputs with a GPS satellite navigation system to determine actual train mileage and location. The system measures such conditions as shock, vibration, and temperature, and can be set to monitor fuel flow. "While railroads historically have not wanted to fix what isn't broken," Harris says, "these systems make maintenance more efficient: Cars stay in service longer, there is less material cost and less waste, man-hours for vehicle inspection are reduced, and car availability is increased."

Sky Eye Railway Services, Inc.
"The railroad industry is constantly having to respond to the competitive challenge of other transport modes like trucks, which are implementing more real-time monitoring as a function of customer demand," says Bruno S. Pietrobon, vice president-business development for Sky Eye. With the rise of just-in-time service, accurate railcar tracking and ride quality monitoring are becoming necessities.

In the short term, Pietrobon says, the fault detection market will grow in coverage of such time sensitive freight as perishables, automobiles, and newsprint. To protect this freight as well as the railcars that carry it, Sky Eye fault detectors-which mount to cars, containers, or locomotives specified by the customer-identify such events as overspeed impacts, truck hunting, vertical impacts, or temperature/pressure changes. Data is transferred via satellite with a GPS report to Sky Eye's data management center, where it is processed and retransmitted to railroads or car owners via e-mail, fax, pager, or telephone. The system can also send alarms directly to clients if component or lading damage is imminent. Depending on the commodity and condition, the railroad can choose to inspect the load or car at the next stopping point, let the car continue on to its destination and risk possible damage, or stop the train to repair the car immediately. Activity reports allow maintenance departments to "allocate maintenance dollars to the appropriate assets," says Pietrobon.

StarTrak LLC
In 1993, StarTrak deployed its first railcar monitoring equipment on autoracks using satellite communication technology. The HealthTrak system is a two-way, real-time communication system found mainly on cars carrying high value freight. "Improving damage prevention is the biggest driver of these devices," says Tim Slifkin, president of StarTrak. With them, "you can predict certain failure modes before they get out of control and better maintain your fleet."

HealthTrak uses microprocessor-controlled sensors to monitor railcar behavior, and accelerometers to measure vibration and impact information at various frequencies. Modules, attached to a car or locomotive, monitor events specific to a customer's needs: Coupler and in-train forces, rough handling, theft, low fuel levels, truck hunting, and wheel wear. On railcars, they are powered by small solar panels. Customers determine method, frequency, and notification trigger levels, and can track the location of each car or container over the Internet.

"One North American customer told us that if he spent $1 million on StarTrak equipment, he could manage his fleet more aggressively and reduce his car inventory by $8 million," says Slifkin.

I.D. Systems, Inc.
The basic railroad monitoring system from I.D. Systems, Inc., employs "asset communicators" attached to each car in a unit train. The asset communicators use local radio repeater technology to communicate up the train to a head-end unit on a locomotive or railcar. The communicators can monitor such conditions as truck hunting, car temperature/humidity, car pressure, locomotive fuel level, oil pressure, and container security, and are able to record each car's mileage and maintenance schedules. The head-end unit transmits any faults or "exceptions" in real time via satellite to a customer's network and displays alarms to the train crew.

Additionally, the system allows remote real-time data polling. Like a wayside system, only one unit-the head-end unit-incurs a communications cost to transfer information. "For additional savings," says Kevin Clyne, director-marketing development for I.D. Systems, "we install highly-intelligent antennas in yards that allow the asset communicators to communicate continuously without charge, since a railcar spends 70-95% of its time in yards."

I.D. Systems is presently developing and testing a similar product for railcars not part of a unit train consist. The Accumulator combines cell radio technology, a base/local radio, and a GPS system into one battery-operated unit installed on a railcar. Clyne explains the system this way: "When railcars outfitted with this system are put into a consist, they will talk to each other as long as one unit is within 500 feet of another. Those cars able to communicate together will dynamically configure themselves as a group and will select one master-the equivalent of the unit train's head-end unit-to communicate any exceptions. There can be multiple groups within a train; even one car can constitute a group. As more railcars are outfitted with the system, the larger the group can become, increasing cost savings."

Triant Technologies
Triant Technologies recently developed a Vehicle Health Monitor for the fully-automated, driverless Docklands Light Railway in the U.K. Part of Docklands' car design, the VHM consists of two onboard computers, one for each half of the 92-foot long, two-car articulated trainsets. The computers monitor such subsystems as temperature, signaling, brakes, and doors, and are linked by a fiber optic cable under the floor. If either computer detects a fault, a fault code is sent to the main vehicle onboard computer, which reads the code and sends it to the main control room via the trackside signaling system. Faults are also displayed on an LCD screen inside the cars to alert the conductor.

GE Harris Harmon Railway Technology
"There is a old wives' tale about a crane, mounted to the back of a freight car, that releases and swings for 100 miles, knocking over signals and damaging the right-of-way," says Randy W. Goyer, product manager-train inspection systems for GE Harris Harmon Railway Technology. GE Harris Harmon developed the Static Dragger to detect such occurrences early. Trackside readers record AEI tags and count car axles to identify where the problem is located.

GE Harris Harmon also supplies infrared bearing detectors. These wayside detectors monitor infrared heat: If the amount detected exceeds alarm criteria, rail personnel are notified. For cars used in mountainous or hilly areas, hot and cold wheel detectors are available. Hot wheel detectors scan wheels for overheating due to brakes that stick, and cold detectors scan for cold wheels to determine if brakes are applied as a train goes downgrade. Additionally, GE Harris Harmon offers the Pinpoint system, an onboard health monitoring system for locomotives.

Although cost is always an issue for railroads, "many believe an investment in fault detection is a necessary evil," Goyer says. "The price of one system is minute compared to the cost of having to pick a train up off the ground after a derailment."

Salient Systems, Inc.
"While a vast majority of wheels have imperfections that are unimportant, a small fraction of 1% (one in 10,000-100,000) are bad," says Dana L. Earl, general manager and sales director for Salient Systems, Inc. "We have documented cases where one bad wheel damaged rail for miles."

WILD (Wheel Impact Load Detector) is Salient Systems' principal product, which monitors locomotive and car wheel health on the wayside. The system measures the magnitude of forces the wheel exerts on the rail. If the force is equal to the weight on the rail, the wheel is deemed "healthy." If the wheel is irregular or condemnable, an alarm is sent to identify the problem and its location. This information is also transferred to a database system that analyzes the measurements on every wheel, on every vehicle, at every wayside site. WILD can include such optional features as the Skewed and Hunting Truck Detection System.

Currently, Salient Systems is working with the Transportation Technology Center, Inc., to produce a wayside Truck Performance Detector (TPD), which will be available by year-end. The TPD will monitor how well a vehicle's suspension system performs in a curve, where derailments most often occur. It will measure wheel/rail forces and angle of attack as well as record AEI tags so railroads and car owners "can focus maintenance programs on the poor performers, not on mileage or time in service," says Dana Earl. Salient Systems will handle detector sales and service.

The TPD will also transfer data to InteRRis (Integrated Railway Remote Information Service), TTCI's car performance database service designed to analyze data and report trends from fault detectors in service. As InteRRis grows, it will serve as "a historical record of vehicle performance," says Mike Lovette, chief-rail operations programs for TTCI.

One of the benefits of InteRRis is that it will help detector users plan overall maintenance programs. "You wouldn't take your car in on Monday to have the transmission repaired, in on Tuesday for an oil change, and in on Wednesday to change the tires," Lovette says. "We want to tie all repairs together and reduce the cost of car maintenance." InteRRis will take all of the information accumulated from different detectors on a car and generate a maintenance schedule based on that car's total component performance. TTCI will also send the database information to its sister company, Railinc, to compile industry performance reports and break down event counts by railroad.

"Railroads are beginning to understand they cannot risk a lot of road failures, since train delays accumulate exponentially that way," says Lovette. "Consequently, scheduling car maintenance proactively rather than reactively is a growing trend" that helps keep the industry's investment on track.