This research examined the feasibility of applying Time Domain Reflectometry to the task of broken rail detection. The key innovation is to regard the track as a two-wire electrical transmission line, and then apply the same electrical pulse/echo technique that is commonly used to locate breaks and shorts in electrical cables. The aim of the proposed locomotive-mounted system is to allow each t...

In this paper we will describe our experiences with modelling and simulating realistic railroad systems, based on component-oriented Petri Nets. Several libraries of railroad components are presented, including nets permitting the train to control the routers in the net. Petri Nets are translated into Maude in an automated way, and executed by the Maude interpreter. Since railroad models are la...

Abstract Ballast fouling in railroad substructure is detrimental to railroad track effectiveness and its structural capacity. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) provides a rapid, effective and continuous approach to assess railroad substructure condition. However, unknown ballast dielectric constant and unclear interface between clean and fouled ballast limit the GPR assessment accuracy. In this st...

In the United States, the freight railway industry is already running without much excess capacity. Hence, better planning and scheduling tools are needed to effectively manage the scarce resources, to cope with the rapidly increasing demand for railway transportation. The integration of freight train and passenger train scheduling and dispatching is an important railroad management task since ...

The dynamic performance of a railroad vehicle as related to safety is evaluated in terms of specific performance indices like ride quality. The ride quality is interpreted as the capability of the railroad vehicle suspension to maintain the motion within the range of human comfort and or within the range necessary to ensure that there is no damage to the cargo it carries. The recent trend in dy...

This study develops an integrated data-driven and model-driven approach (template matching) that clusters the urban railroad point clouds into three classes of rail track, contact cable, and catenary cable. The employed dataset covers 630 m of the Dutch urban railroad corridors in which there are four rail tracks, two contact cables, and two catenary cables. The dataset includes only geometrica...

Derailments are the most common type of train accident in the United States. They cause damage to infrastructure, rolling stock and lading, disrupt service, and have the potential to cause casualties, and harm the environment. Train safety and risk analysis relies on accurate assessment of derailment likelihood. Derailment rate - the number of derailments normalized by traffic exposure - is a u...

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2261, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2011, pp. 178–185. DOI: 10.3141/2261-21 structure and operational conditions. Track-related and equipmentrelated accident causes collectively result in the majority of train derailments in the United States. Understanding how they may...