ABA Surveying - 3D Railway Design Scanning

Knowledge means building a database or dataset from which we can make informed decisions on planning, design and maintenance. This is a very simple concept that is often overlooked in the railway environment, where tasks are streamed into activities and separated by different disciplines.

ABA Surveying has been surveying railway infrastructure for 18 years and has been the UK's leading exponent of 3D railway scanning since 2000. Now, with the third generation of high-speed scanners, data capture has never been quicker or more accurate. We can supply a 3D railway design world residing on your desktop - a world that you could move around in and question dimensionally, with an accuracy of a few millimetres.

360° FIELD-OF-VIEW 3D SCANNING

From a place of safety, a static scanner at the side of the track can make a complete 360° field-of-view scan of all details within a range of 50m to an accuracy of better than ±5mm: in excess of 40 million points are collected in little more than six minutes.

If possessions permit, the scanners will be trolley-mounted for use in kinematic mode and each will survey more than 1km/h to an accuracy of 10mm. If the project is large enough, ABA uses a helicopter with full scanning and geo-referencing capabilities to an accuracy of ±35mm.

Data capture has never been faster, more accurate or more complete. Every detail gets scanned - whether it is at ground level or overhead - and once the scans are geo-referenced to each other and to a grid system they are available to view and interrogate on your desktop.

As soon as we have registered the scans to the project grid (or National Grid) ABA publish the scans on their high-bandwidth server and give you a password to log on and access your data.

CUSTOMISABLE 3D SCANNED AREAS

Initially, you will need to download a piece of software called TruView from our website and install it on any computer with Internet access. Then you simply have to log on and pick your area of interest from the scan positions shown on the site map to be able to experience our 3D world. Any number of users can access the data and they can even create and share mark-ups of asset numbers or add hyperlinks to other files or databases.

TruView gives instant access to dimensionally accurate data that covers everything that the scanner sees and is ideal for answering those 'what if?' or 'can I?' questions during the early project design stages. The design process doesn't have to wait until the survey results are available - you can now start as soon as the scans are taken.

SCAN DATA FOR CAD MODELS

It may be that a scan record is all you need, but our experience is that for detailed design you will need accurate CAD models and this can be extracted from the same scan dataset. ABA has the tools, ability and experience to extract scan data into any format: for the designers it will be AutoCad, Microstation or MX Rail; for the maintainers and planners clearance gauging, heights and staggers, or a dimensional database.

MAINTENANCE, DESIGN AND INCIDENT-PLANNING SCANNING

ABA's 3D railway scanning technology is a 21st-century dataset for management that can be used for maintenance, design, visualisation, impact assessment, clash detection, disaster planning or incident planning, all in the most effective and efficient manner.

One survey will fit all when every asset is accurately located against a co-ordinated survey grid, and that survey will also satisfy all the disciplines involved in a new design without the need for individually scoped specifications.

Projects and companies that have bought into this technology include Thameslink 2000, the East London Line, the WCML, Great Eastern, the CTRL, Metronet, LUL, the DLR and the Cambrian Lines (for their ERTMS project). Stations, including Stratford and Blackfriars, have also been remodelled using our 3D railway scanning technology.