PITTSBURGH — Wabtec Corp. has signed agreement to acquire Beena Vision, which manufactures machine-vision-based wayside inspection systems, from Sunnyvale, Calif., technology firm Trimble. Beena Vision’s rolling-stock wayside detectors assess components ranging from wheel surface condition to full train inspection for trains in motion., allowing companies to manage fleet maintenance through sensor and image-based inspection systems. Its systems are installed on North American Class I railroads and worldwide. “Beena Vision’s systems, coupled with Wabtec’s TrackIQ portfolio, will create a comprehensive wayside inspection offering,” Nalin Jain, president of Wabtec’s Digital Electronics business, said in a press release. “TrackIQ’s sensor-based systems and Beena Vision’s technologies combine to produce an industry-leading suite of wayside inspection solutions. These solutions enable our customers to monitor the health of their rolling stock assets, which allows them to realize reductions in maintenance costs, safety incidents and to increase fleet availability for revenue generation.” The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions. Financial terms were not announced.
I know every railroad will fight it to the end, but the manufactures (or the FRA) need to come up with a digital interconnect system at the airhose that can pass sensor data from car to car so it can be collected and shared in real time via the engine’s telemetry interface.
Yes, yes, it would take years to filter the system out of the standard “dumb” cars, but getting a standard on the table and approved so the manufacturers can start integrating it now so it will be there in 25 years will kickoff the process of improving rolling stock use and duration cycles instead of waiting for the next derail disaster to inform them.
John-
I hear you and agree, but why does your proposed system have to be ‘wired’? FReDs and DMUs use wireless already, and having wireless telemetry would make it easier to intermix updated and legacy cars in a consist (even in the same block — gotta support the panacea-du-jour, PSR, ya know…).
Spectrum for wireless is getting scarce. I also thought of RFID tags and other wireless methods (LoRA etc) to use for data collection. Trains did a story about a railcar that used an LTE router to store and forward telemetry on the reefer that had a special environment load. But that is too expensive on a per car basis.
Some others have suggested using PTC spectrum to pass telemetry on car health. Since I know how rail operators hate change, they would rather drag a bad wheel on a hopper until it gets flat (or derails), before stopping somewhere to set the car aside.
I am sure some actuary at Trinity, Greenbriar and others have done the statistical analysis of a component failure in their new rolling stock. If adding telemetry support continues to cost more than using more specialized materials, then nothing will change.
Just like the computer industry rates their lifecycles in terms of MTBF (mean time between failure), I am sure the railcar constructors have a similar benchmark process.
Sensor technology has come a long way and is much, much cheaper than ever. It just seems that using visual tools (like Beena) and special xray exams for rails is getting old school.