International Railway Journal - August 2007 - (Page 41)

LASER MEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGY Rail Alignment Measurement l t t Faster and safer S&C inspection The PSM-200 system measures the position of the railway track in two dimensions with a high degree of accuracy and helps the vehicle's track reinforcement mechanism to adjust the rail rapidly and precisely to the reference position. The system is suitable for tamping machines and measurement coaches as well as for manual inspection with a lightweight trolley. P ATROLLING track to inspect switches and crossings (S&C) is a timeconsuming and potentially hazardous task for permanent way staff. The Video Inspection Train (VST) by Eurailscout is designed to offer a fast, safe alternative to foot patrols, allowing switches and crossings to be inspected and monitored from a moving vehicle at up to 40km/h. According to Eurailscout, VST is capable of inspecting a whole station in six hours, an operation which would normally take a team of eight people two days to complete. VST uses seven synchronised cameras to record track condition in detail. These pictures are assigned, sorted and analysed using onboard software, allowing engineering staff to view the data in an office. An event manager enables fast changing between views of the straight and the turnout run of the same switch. This software also ensures switch numbers are automatically detected by identifying the crossing nose. VST has been assessed and approved by Dutch infrastructure authority ProRail and a VST vehicle has been successfully operating in the Netherlands for more than a year. A second VST vehicle is now being put into operation by Eurailscout. www.eurailscout.com Safety Distance Measurement y e t The CMP3-30 sensor measures distance to any object, fast and accurately. This small and robust unit can be used out of doors for measuring the safety distance between railway maintenance machines and other rail vehicles. Picking up the pace with corrugation detection L IKE S&C inspection, measurement of rail’s longitudinal profile for grinding is a time-consuming process often conducted at little more than walking pace. Precise measurement of the rail is essential to ensure grinding does not leave tiny irregularities of no more than a few microns amplitude. Current measurement speeds constrain the rate of rail grinding if a continuous measurement is required over a full grinding site. The Rail Corrugation Analyser (RCA) by RailMeasurement, Britain, can be attached to a rail-based or road-rail vehicle to overcome this problem, but is light enough to be operated by hand if required. It has a typical measuring speed of 10km/h but RailMeasurement says considerable variation in measurement speed is possible with little reduction in accuracy. RCA has been validated by making runs to assess both repeatability (measurements taken in the same conditions) and reproducibility (measurements carried out under varying conditions). RCA has also been tested against RailMeasurement’s hand-operated corrugation analysis trolley, which is accurate enough to measure acoustic rail roughness. Michael Martin Schienentechnik, Austria, has recently used RCA with a road-rail vehicle (pictured) to test the severity and extent of corrugation on light rail and metro lines in Vienna. www.railmeasurement.com Bridge Deflection Measurement e n t Noptel’s displacement measurement products measure the dynamics of large structures like bridges, towers, buildings and masts. The results obtained in the customer studies show that the system provides valuable information for evaluating the behaviour of large structures under changing loading conditions. Noptel - Your partner in laser measurement IRJ August 2007 http://www.eurailscout.com http://www.noptel.fi http://www.railmeasurement.com http://www.noptel.fi

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of International Railway Journal - August 2007

Contents This month News Market News Transit News News Analysis Voith Goes For Maxima Impact First Gauge-Changeable Loco Under Test Power Surge China Feels the Need For Speed A Firm Foundation For Chinese High-Speed Testing Times on the Betuwe Route Tough Tests For Mass Transit Software A Measure of Success Rendezvous Full Contact List Advertisers Index The Last Word

International Railway Journal - August 2007

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