Watch: CSX Launches Train Inspection Portal No. 3
Written by Marybeth Luczak, Executive Editor
Pictured: CSX’s third train inspection portal from Duos Technologies.
CSX on Feb. 28 reported opening its third train inspection portal, which is inspecting up to 20 trains per day on the busy main line at Walthourville, Ga., northeast of the Waycross terminal.
The portal, purchased from Duos Technologies in late 2021, performs detailed inspections of trains moving at track speed—between 40 mph and 50 mph.
CSX started using the Duos portals in 2019. According to Kim Bowling, the Class I railroad’s Director of Wayside Diagnostics, the portal is “an overall camera system. Instead of looking at just one camera, we are using 20 cameras to look at multiple items of the train as it passes in real time.” Pictures of the train’s underside are taken from the center of the track, Bowling explained in a CSX video presentation (watch below).
The system’s aim is to boost efficiency and safety, allowing CSX to detect problems before they occur and reduce line-of-road failures. According to Bubba Turner, CSX Assistant Chief Mechanical Officer, Southern Region, “Line-of-road failures are impactful not only for the train and the customers’ cars that are on that train, but also any other train that may occupy that line as well. It identifies issues, prevents train stops, provides a safer, more reliable product to keep our railroad fluid—reduce dwell and increase velocity.”
CSX’s two other portals are positioned just outside of Waycross, Ga., and on the Fitzgerald Subdivision, respectively.
