Railway Track and Vehicle Onboard Monitoring: A Review

Abstract

Railway condition monitoring is the compound of activities aimed at the detection and mitigation of faults in both tracks and vehicles. This minimizes damage and disruption, and increases the usability and benefits of railways. Trackside monitoring provides frequent data, but is costly and ineffective for large segments of track. Onboard monitoring using dedicated vehicles provides deep knowledge of the track, but is infrequent and requires allocated resources and track availability. The use of sensors onboard passenger trains overcomes these issues by acquiring signals more frequently and with relatively inexpensive devices, hence the increasing use of these devices. This review presents the current techniques applied for track and train condition monitoring techniques using onboard sensors, as well as the use of trackside sensors.