Wayside Inspection Devices - Monitoring of Railway Bogies

Wayside Inspection Devices (WID) is a specialist supplier of innovative wayside monitoring systems for in-service inspection of bogies for passenger, freight and heavy-haul railroads.

WAYSIDE MONITORING SYSTEMS FOR IN-SERVICE INSPECTION OF RAIL BOGIES

WID's patented technology is an essential tool for lowering the stress state and increasing the safety of railways. It enables a predictive condition-based maintenance program using system-wide defect thresholds.

WID systems overcome the inherent limitations of traditional contact technologies. Not only are rail bogies that present a higher risk of derailment readily identified, but incipient problem vehicles are also trended and flagged before severe wear has set in. Operators can thus schedule timely cost-effective repairs and avoid further expensive rolling stock and infrastructure damage.

WID has earned an excellent reputation for producing trouble-free, accurate measurement systems, well adapted to the harsh railroad operating environment.

INSPECTION OF RAIL BOGIE GEOMETRY

TBOGI is a laser-based rail bogie performance monitoring system that delivers very accurate and precise measurements. The TBOGI system can provide accurate and precise measurements of the wheel-set angle of attack and tracking position. It is also capable of identifying skewed, warped and misaligned rail bogies as well as bogies with incorrect wheel-set tracking that wear their wheels asymmetrically, even before severe wear sets in.

The TBOGI operates on a tangent track eliminating the need for a special track layout

Non-contact sensors are installed at a safe distance from passing trains in order not to interfere with any track maintenance work. Other features of this bogie performance monitoring system include the high reliability record and the low cost of ownership.

RAIL BOGIE PERFORMANCE MONITORING

The patented measurement method embodied in TBOGI provides a wide dynamic range and yields consistent results. Wide dynamic range allows TBOGI to identify very subtle bogie performance deficiencies while also capturing gross defects. More importantly, the consistency of data provided by TBOGI allows users to trend the health of their rolling stock, thereby enabling the scheduling of maintenance interventions to correct impending defects before an exception is raised or other damage is caused.

TBOGI has an excellent record of providing meaningful and actionable information with no false alarms and is widely recognized as the technology of choice for bogie performance monitoring.

DETECTION OF LATERALLY UNSTABLE BOGIES / HUNTING BOGIES

In addition to bogie performance monitoring, TBOGI-HD configuration detects laterally unstable bogies / hunting bogies.

TBOGI-HD consists of an array of three TBOGI modules. The tracking position or lateral position of each wheel set is thus repeatedly measured and analyzed to determine if it is unstable.

Contrary to other technologies, the TBOGI-HD hunting detector provides results in physical units rather than an arbitrary index.