After some accidents in railroads in Brazil with serious injury to the crew, I am wondering if there is any kind of electronic device that send message to CTc or other train control system to inform the locomotive suffered an accident. I work in the aviation industry where we have special devices that send message to satelites to inform about accident, but I do not know if the rail industry have equipment like these.
Pedro: The answer is yes, with General Electric's system doing the bulk of the monitoring out of a central data collection center at Erie, PA.....If certain parameters alarm in unison, the system pushes the panic button. In addition, impact sensor devices on individual railcars and locomotives adds to the fun.
I watched a recent presentation on this that featured Olin Mathieson's system for hazmat cars (chlorine). Here is a PDF file with some of the details.
I was agitating a couple of decades ago for the 'equivalent' of an aircraft ELT, which would transmit a coded information stream in lieu of a simple radio 'beep' (I got this from the proposed modification of the Emergency Broadcast System tone to support modem-like data modulation for the kinds of purpose the SAME header provides in EAN) with specific information of importance to first responders and railroad personnel. With the practical advent of GPS cores that can access 'commercial' differential resources the usefulness of such a device has increased in a number of respects.
Of course there is also the potential adaptation of the PTC SBR hardware to provide a 'bridge' for various first-response radio systems, although this might be of limited use for some of the equipment actually involved in an accident...
mudchicken Pedro: The answer is yes, with General Electric's system doing the bulk of the monitoring out of a central data collection center at Erie, PA.....If certain parameters alarm in unison, the system pushes the panic button. In addition, impact sensor devices on individual railcars and locomotives adds to the fun.
The current technologies availavle would most probably be configured to provide' warnings' of everything from system failures of on-board systems on locomotivesl. Those same technologies could also incorporate elements that could provide notifications of 'catastrophic events' involving those same units.
The major porblem would seem to be that each of those 'warning elements' would be provided as an 'add-on' feature. Provided by either the locomotive builder or a supplemental supplier to the owner/ leassor of the particular locomotive. Costs and economics being the over-riding concern of the involved parties. GE, IIRC provides a 'link' to each covered power unit, as described by mudchicken; linking their covered units back to a central information center. If GE is doing it already, one would have to 'bet' that EMD is or will be providing a similaqr service(?)
Pedrop; being in the aviation industry, you are probably aware that some aircraft and engine manufactures provide for satellite linkages that make periodic reports to information centers on the performance of .their particular products.
The crash of the Malaysian Air flight M370 was a prime example of a situation that could have been reasonably quickly by the presence of an active on board SDU [Satellite Data Unit]. It was present, but its reporting capability was limited by Malasian Air's decision not to 'purchase' a fully functional system. Once again a 'bean-counting decision' was either the right way to go, or the wrong way. Depending on which side of the ledger it was made on. { Apparently, MAL was, at the time, in troublesome financial condition(?).
Railroad technology seems to be in a cross-roads situation...Which Techonology is important, and to whom is so important 'they' will be willing to pay for all the information, or just part of it?
Given the amount of computerization in modern locomotives, pulling certain parameters off the computer should be fairly easy. An emergency application would be easy to detect, and it might be fairly easy to know where the application came from - ie, engineer-applied or from the train. An accelerometer would probably have to be added to the locomotives to detect collisions or roll-overs.
There's already been discussion here of installing sensors on locomotives that reports track quality.
The next question is the manner in which the info from the locomotives is monitored - some method would have to be set up so the person who got the alarm could quickly know which dispatcher to notify. Having a real person in that chain would be cheaper than equipping numerous dispatch centers with the necessary equipment, unless it already exists there.
As I recall, Onstar has the ability to speak to the vehicle's occupants. Short of adding that capability to all of the locomotives, using the existing capability - dispatchers - would cover that.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
While its possible its not actually being done. There really is no realtime alert being given to the railroads that is faster than people hearing the "boom". Sending the information to GE is nice but there isn't really a system being used to relay that information back to anybody who would respond.
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Most of my carriers engines are GPS equipped. The GPS is interrogated approximately every 30 minutes and appropriate data is retrieved from the locomotive - on line or off line.
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dehusman While its possible its not actually being done. There really is no realtime alert being given to the railroads that is faster than people hearing the "boom". Sending the information to GE is nice but there isn't really a system being used to relay that information back to anybody who would respond.
CN's witronix-equipped fleet is set up to send an alarm and a photo to management whenever the brakes go into emergency above 10 MPH.
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mudchickenThe data goes directly to the owning railroad's dispatcher's MOE desk and to the railroad dispatcher (Cls 1 plus some of the mice) that the unit is actually on.
As I said, its possible and it might be used by some railroads, but it isn't being used by all the class 1's. The GPS and maintenance reads only go to the owning railroad (PTC may require sharing some GPS info).
Thanks mudchicken. I am working with a group of VLI rr employees to find a way to know when an accident happens in desolated areas. VLI lost an engineer in a recent derail in such location, and the CTC took more than Six hours to perceive that the train was in trouble.
Thanks SD70M-2Dude
I visited the Witronix webpage and will took a look in the list of products they offer to railroads
RME, thanks for the pdf file. It will help a lot. I also thought on LET, but I imagined the railroad could have something better adapted to trains. As I could see here, there are good options in the market. Thanks to everyone who gave me the hints.
Pedor
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