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12/9/2016

Bartlett & West: Helping to speed the PTC adoption process

Bartlett & West, a leading data processing service provider to Class Is, is partnering with railroads to speed the PTC adoption process. The firm offers “innovative systems” and processes for storing and managing track and wayside data. Bartlett & West can collect, process, integrate, validate and maintain track data so its up to date, saves time and keeps trains moving safely, thereby meeting the data portion of the PTC mandate requirements.

“The track database is the foundation for the locomotive segment and connects locomotives with waysides and the back office. Bartlett & West streamlines the process of preparing track data for quick delivery into the railroad’s track database using interoperable PTC requirements,” says Doug Morrison, Bartlett & West’s vice president of rail services.

Since the process for asset and change management is highly manual — it can take up to 60 days to manually identify, collect and verify data, with the process completing just in time to repeat to meet change detection requirements — Bartlett & West and R. J. Corman Railroad Group have partnered to develop a proprietary solution called a CIM (corridor information modeling) Car. The custom platform incorporates 360-degree LiDAR technology, an independent power supply and an on-board data center all within a typical rail car, thereby allowing the equipment to safely collect change detection and rail corridor data without interrupting operations.

The CIM Car delivers automated mapping of the rail corridor for more precise, quicker and safer asset/change management. Through its 360-degree LiDAR technology, the car is able to capture up to 500,000 measurements per second in addition to providing still images of each point of view.

Data captured through the technology satisfies multiple historical issues — such as high-wide clearance detection, vegetation and encroachment detection, and utility crossings — all in a single pass.