Indian Railways comes up with innovative SMART YARD concept to maintain trains, rolling stock! The new system will help the national transporter to maintain rolling stock and will leverage ICT systems, sensors and data analytics to gather information on rolling stock conditions such as wheel defects, bearing condition, axle temperature, wheel profile, etc., before the train reaches the yard for maintenance. Then, it will use the information for objective fault assessment as well as proactive staffing. This will reduce turn-around time while boosting safety and improving productivity.
Here are the top features of Indian Railways new Smart Yards:RELATED NEWSThe Smart Yard ecosystem comprises of sensors, which are installed on the wayside to collect data from the passing wagons or coaches. The Online Monitoring of Rolling Stock (OMRS) has its own sensors such as RailBAM, WCM-WILD.
The system also includes a Smart Yard Integrated Platform (SIP), which creates a central repository of the data. The Yard officials will get a real-time comprehensive report of a rake entering the yard. To provide a seamless picture of the rolling stock, the SIP will integrate the insights driven from the sensor data with legacy application of the national transporter.
Thus, with quick detection of the defect, maintenance gangs, as well as equipment, can be planned and deployed proactively on the arrival of the rake in the yard. With this, the turnaround time of the rakes is expected to reduce, which will lead to enhancement of the revenue for Indian Railways, operational efficiency for the yards along with quality of life of the staff.
The OMRS consists of Acoustic Bearing Detector (ABD) and Wheel Impact Load Detector (WILD). The ABD provides an early warning on possible defects in the bearing box, before reaching the stage of hot box. On the other hand, WILD measures the impact of wheel on rail tracks to identify the defective wheels in rolling stock automatically.
A pilot project of the Track-side Bogie Monitoring System (TBMS) based on the ABD system has been installed at BAKKAS in Lucknow Division. In phase 1, 25 OMRS equipment are likely to be installed at 20 locations across the Indian Railways network. Out of this, 7 are installed and 9 are expected to be installed in the current financial year. While the remaining systems will be installed by 2020.