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June 2009
By Walter Weart
Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) regulations require railroads to maintain, inspect and test grade crossing warning devices, such as flashing lights and gates, periodically.
A little more than half of the nation’s nearly 140,000 crossings have active protection devices, according to the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Safety.
The FRA also requires railroads to maintain, inspect and test all signals at interlockings periodically. To help roads comply with the federal regulations, suppliers offer remote monitoring systems designed to diagnose malfunctions so critical C&S devices can be repaired quickly. The systems are gaining wider usage, but more C&S equipment needs to be monitored, suppliers say.
“Between 2000 and 2007, there were 4,036 crossing protection activation failures,” says Tom Hill, director of remote solutions for Ansaldo STS USA, which provides remote monitoring equipment. “Fully one-third of those were due to a problem that could have been detected and repaired had equipment that monitors the ‘health’ of the protection devices been installed.”
With equipment health a top operational objective, suppliers continue to develop remote monitoring systems that offer railroads better ways to keep tabs on various devices and keep them in working order.
Ansaldo STS USA offers the TransPortal® Network and TransPortal® Remote Monitor, which are designed to monitor crossing devices wirelessly.
The systems feature event recorders that detect and report malfunctions or “anomalous trends” related to gate operations, lamp or power outages, insufficient standby battery power and warning time problems, according to the supplier.
“Two major advantages of the TransPortal system are its ability to communicate with legacy systems, as well as allow any monitored parameter to be remotely polled with transmissions using a wide variety of wired or wireless communications systems,” says Hill.
By using remote monitoring features, a railroad can determine the status of the equipment and prioritize their responses to better utilize manpower, he says. In addition, if a railroad needs to dispatch a signal maintainer, that worker will know what to expect, Hill adds.
This remote monitoring feature was crucial for one of Ansaldo STS USA’s customers, which operates a heavy-haul line in a remote area of Canada.
“It is very difficult to reach many installation sites due to the geography of the region, so not having to dispatch repair personnel to address ‘false alarms’ is a very real benefit,” says Hill.
The TransPortal system’s processing strength and flexibility is enabling Ansaldo STS USA to offer enhanced detection of stuck or stalled vehicles at crossings to augment inductive loop systems at four-quadrant gate installations, he says.
Safetran Systems Corp. also offers several monitoring systems for crossings. The SEARII, SEARIIi and Argus crossing recorders have built-in capability for remote monitoring, the company said in an email.
The systems can report crossing health, critical and operational alarms to the Wayside Alarm Management System (WAMS), Safetran’s central office. The systems also offer real-time monitoring of input/output during a train move and remote access to the event log with proper password authority.
Safetran recorders come with standard logic applications for alarm detection or can be customized for any remote-monitoring needs, the company said.
Safetran offers automatic test applications for crossings that electronically perform, track and gather the mandated tests. Having this logic perform its checks with every train move affords the customer immediate knowledge of potential issues, the company said.
WAMS keeps track of and automatically schedules these tests, and notifies individual department or territory heads as to status. System administrative functions that are built in to WAMS completely manage all feature sets, Safetran said.
Some of WAMS’ major features include automated testing and electronic form generation, such as mandated test notification, scheduling and tracking; live monitoring of crossing recorder inputs during train moves; and dark territory critical alarm capture.
Safetran currently is updating WAMS with a comprehensive online entry system for mandated tests, and updating and improving the systems’ screens to offer GPS mapping of all locations.
RailComm Inc. already has updated its remote monitoring system line. The company recently developed the I2 (Intelligent Interpreter), a next-generation communication controller.
The I2 is designed to provide an interface between a central office processor, such as dispatching or a Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, and an interlocking, crossing controller, defect detector, train-to-wayside communications device or any equipment that requires monitoring and/or remote control, according to RailComm.
The controller can interface to either relay- or microprocessor-based systems. A protocol converter, the I2 can emulate any common communication protocol, and allow redundant communication channels and seamless failover to a backup in case of a primary path failure, according to RailComm.
The company designed and produced the I2 for the Capitol Metro commuter-rail system in Austin, Texas, says RailComm President and Chief Executive Officer Joe Denny.
Last year, RailComm installed the system for Capitol Metro, enabling the agency to communicate with 18 interlocking control points and receive crossing equipment health information from more than 70 crossing locations. Some I2s have been deployed to interface to wide-load detectors, says Denny.
Two installation locations involve interlockings with Union Pacific Railroad, and the others involve control points within Capitol Metro’s route, he says.
For Ultra-Tech Enterprises Inc. (UTE), a Class I is the proving ground for InterTest®, an automated interlocking test system that’s been in the development stage for several years.
The Class I continues to perform field tests, says UTE Director of Engineering J. C. Winkler, adding that InterTest currently is installed at one location for ongoing tests and another location for demonstration-site purposes. Winkler declined to identify the Class I.
A PC-based system, InterTest features both commercial and proprietary hardware, including control point interfaces (CPIs) with various hall effect devices, or non-intrusive current measurement devices that don’t require a direct connection.
The CPIs connect to a router, which collects the data and helps determine the state of the interlocking, including lamp outages, track current and switch motors.
“One of the major applications for InterTest is to perform in-service tests for new construction and cutovers, reading data from multiple locations that are equipped with our system utilizing some type of communications, such as a radio or wide-area network,” says Winkler.
InterTest can provide the “building blocks” for positive train control (PTC) and the automation of post-installation testing, he says.
Siemens Transportation Systems Inc. offers an interlocking monitoring system, too.
The company recently introduced the Siemens Computer-Aided Signaling (Sicas) S7, a wayside controller platform for interlockings that’s designed to remotely diagnose and monitor wayside electronics and controlled equipment.
The system also can be used for crossing control functions, primarily for transit-rail applications that typically don’t require constant warning time, according to Siemens.
In 2006, the company completed its first Sicas S7 installation on a CSX Transportation line near Jacksonville, Fla., where the system monitors switches and signals in connection with passing sidings, says Siemens’ Director of Sales and Marketing Blake Kozol.
Late last year, the company also installed the system for the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon. In addition, Calgary Transit is a Sicas S7 customer, says Kozol.
Sicas S7 provides “extensive” remote diagnostic and monitoring functionality, he says. The system can remotely monitor light outages, coded track circuit ballast conditions and switch
machine throw times. Sicas S7 can be used from any PC with network access using a software-based local control panel.
The system also “can be accessed remotely via cellular service, radio or a wired network,” says Kozol. “The processor resides in the signal cabinet and has touch-screen or push-button capability.”
Meanwhile, Modular Mining Systems Inc. is attempting to take remote monitoring one step further by offering a system that can manage and monitor train movements, as well as interface with signaling, crossing equipment and switches.
The company has developed and is deploying the Railway Management System (RMS) Smartrain®, which is designed to collect and process information from numerous devices and distribute data in real time throughout a network.
The information is immediately accessible so signaling and maintenance personnel can plan, execute, monitor and supervise remote equipment, and schedule repairs as needed without delay — “significantly avoiding” operational disruptions, said Modular Mining Manager of Rail Systems Mark Vorobiev in an email.
Smartrain can integrate into existing infrastructure as a top supervisory layer, an important feature for railroads because, through mergers and acquisitions, they might use legacy signaling and interlocking equipment, and wayside devices from several different manufacturers that vary by models and age, he said.
The system combines several state-of-the-art technologies, such as real-time data radio communications that encompass elements of PTC and communications-based train control, said Vorobiev.
Modular Mining has deployed Smartrain on a 556-mile heavy-haul freight railroad in northern Brazil, which serves a large iron-ore mine and the port of Sao Luis.
The system has helped the railroad increase throughput by more than doubling the number of trains through its system, as well as reduce trip cycle times by seven hours, without a significant infrastructure expenditure, said Vorobiev.
All suppliers continue to stress R&D in an effort to provide remote monitoring systems that offer railroads more operational benefits and efficiencies.
“We are exploring improved methods of monitoring and assessing the performance of warning lamps, and increasingly automating the monthly, on-site FRA tests at crossings,” says Ansaldo STS USA’s Hill. “There are significant labor savings, as well as the opportunity for more comprehensive, continuous testing than a once per-month on-site series of tests.”
Monitoring or managing wayside equipment is a big part of efficient rail operations, and the proper handling of data collected from devices ultimately will enable railroads to shorten reaction times and make better operational decisions, says Siemens Transportation Systems’ Kozol.
“Railroads want the ability to see as much information as possible without physically visiting multiple sites,” he says. “So, an emerging trend is the increased capability of equipment to warn of adverse conditions prior to a failure, which would interrupt traffic.”
Walter Weart is a Denver-based free-lance writer.
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