The railway industry becomes more and more interrelated with IT solutions. Several European countries have already implemented some, while others are just thinking about it. What are the advantages of IT solutions for infrastructure asset...Read more
Railway infrastructure monitoring becomes more and more sophisticated. Infrastructure managers analyse not only the conditions of the rails but also the trains running on it. Sometimes, infrastructure managers know more about the rolling stock of...Read more
Voestalpine’s Metal Engineering Division has been restructured. As of April 1, 2018. the Rail, Turnout Systems and Signalling Technology business segments were officially regrouped under the ‘Railway Systems’ umbrella. The new business areas include urban...Read more
Until recently, Viennese tram operator Wiener Linien had no centralized database containing net-wide infrastructure data. After implementing an infrastructure database, the operator is now working with the Technical University of Vienna to create a model...Read more
The international rail sector can learn a lot by looking at Scandinavian rail companies, says Peter Boom from Voestalpine Signaling. “In Scandinavia, they like to use new technologies and are often ahead of other countries.”
The...Read more
“Digitalisation is a very challenging topic for the railway sector, but I think it can ultimately revolutionise the sector,” Johannes Neuhold from the Graz University of Technology argues. “The key point is to take the...Read more
Much more can be done with data than is currently the case, but regulations get in the way, says Sytse Bisschop from Dutch infrastructure manager ProRail. Data can only be used optimally if regulations keep...Read more
Machine learning is an important asset to predict where track maintenance will be needed, Dirk Bothof of Asset Insight says. Machine learning is an artificial intelligence technique that gives computers the ability to learn. Asset...Read more
Graz University of Technology wants to use acoustic waves to detect track failures and worn components. In many countries, distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is already being used to identify the location of trains. Ivan Vidovic is Research...Read more
If the Netherlands wants its rail network to perform as well as Japan, the impact of disruptions on the track must be reduced. That can be done by disentangling the rail network and combining the...Read more
“Data only acquires meaning when it is combined with physical observations and models. Then it becomes information”, says Diego Galar, Professor of Condition Monitoring at Luleå University of Technology (LTU). “You need to know the...Read more
All over the world, human resource management strategies have lead to a loss of experts in the field of railway infrastructure management, according to Johannes Neuhold and Matthias Landgraf at Graz University of Technology. “The only chance...Read more
As the tracks are being used more and more worldwide, the timeframe in which the infrastructure can be serviced becomes shorter. Especially on busy tracks, it is no more than a couple of hours per...Read more
ProRail collects a lot of data on rolling stock via its Wayside Train Monitoring Systems (WTMS). The Dutch infrastructure manager is calling on the rail sector to make use of this ‘treasure trove of data’...Read more
Digitalisation is fundamental for asset management in the rail sector, as it makes it possible to share information about track sections, ‘the assets’, with everyone. “Really, every track section should have its own Facebook page”,...Read more