Trackside X-Ray System To Protect Railway Tracks

Kaustubh Katdare

Kaustubh Katdare

@thebigk • Oct 26, 2024
India's Railway Minister, Sadananda Gowda will present India's Railway Budget tomorrow in the parliament and is likely to introduce a new railway track safety mechanism, called 'Trackside X-Ray System'. There have been accidents all over India because of faulty railway tracks and the new technology will help preventing such accidents to a greater extent. The X-Ray units will be located at strategic locations on the railway tracks to continuously monitor the health of the track and report any damages quickly to the control stations.

Railway-Damaged-Track
Image Source: nation.com.pk​

The X-Ray system is also capable of detecting faults in the wheels of the railway wagons , bearings and also in the disk brakes. We learn that the technology can effectively monitor rail weld foot, middle web and rail head sections. We'd love to know from our fellow engineers their opinion and ideas on enhancing the safety of railway tracks in India. The challenges of installing and maintaining such systems are quite different from the rest of the world, as you'd guess.

Source: <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation/railways/rail-budget-2014-to-propose-x-ray-system-to-detect-faults-in-trains/articleshow/37885983.cms" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rail Budget: Rail Budget 2014 to propose X-ray system to detect faults in trains - The Economic Times</a>
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  • Ramani Aswath

    Ramani Aswath

    @ramani-VR4O43 • Jul 6, 2014

    Maybe the RM's head needs an x ray examination first. How can anyone predict where these detectors should be located?
    Secondly the failure is more often in the fixture of the rail to the sleepers rather than the rail itself. There may be 1000 sleepers to a km of track. Stupendous deployment problem.
    It may be much cheaper to run a vehicle mounted sophisticated track monitoring station along the track once a week or even once a day.

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  • Kaustubh Katdare

    Kaustubh Katdare

    @thebigk • Jul 6, 2014

    Maybe a better solution to check the track continuity is to charge the track and check for the continuity. I'm not sure how'd this work out; but it surely will be cheaper and can be installed in bulk.

    I agree with the vehicle mounted track monitoring system.
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  • Kaustubh Katdare

    Kaustubh Katdare

    @thebigk • Jul 6, 2014

    Another Idea (that was fast!)

    How about installing the track monitoring systems in the last carriage of every railway? This would definitely work on high-traffic train routes; and we can have some other systems for the tracks that don't have that much traffic.
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  • Ramani Aswath

    Ramani Aswath

    @ramani-VR4O43 • Jul 6, 2014

    Kaustubh Katdare
    Another Idea (that was fast!)
    How about installing the track monitoring systems in the last carriage of every railway? This would definitely work on high-traffic train routes; and we can have some other systems for the tracks that don't have that much traffic.
    Why not indeed? Good idea.
    Actually it need not be on every train. I doubt if the damage is so acute as to happen in 24 hours. Each terminus can have a system which can be attached to any train as per pre worked out schedule.
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  • Rajni Jain

    Rajni Jain

    @rajni-E46Rlm • Jul 6, 2014

    Definitely tracking systems would helps.

    However I believe the problem of these faults are human being who destroy the tracks at many places; in those situations probably these systems may not work as well.

    We need a better solution for that; engine mounted system with super power brakes may be one of the way.
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