29 June 2020 | Angel Trains
Angel Trains is a member of a consortium led by Rail Innovations, that has been successful in winning funding for an innovative project that will monitor trains using thermal radiometry, to reduce service failures and costs through increased preventative maintenance. The fellow consortium members are DB ESG, the Great Central Railway and SeSys.
Rail Innovations and its consortium will utilise thermal radiometry to measure and monitor the temperatures of different parts of a train’s engine and its auxiliary systems. This means that the system will be able to detect an over-temperature event in any of the equipment, and will transmit a snapshot of the thermal image to the train operator, over the mobile phone network, via an independent SIM card. This will enable the operator to assess the severity of the incipient failure and plan the most cost-effective repair regime. The monitoring system will be completely autonomous and the resulting preventative maintenance will help reduce costs.
Without the funding provided by the Department for Transport and facilitation by Innovate UK as part of their “First of a Kind 2020 Rail Innovation Programme”, the cost of running proof-of-concept trials for this technology on a passenger train and trackside, in the safety-critical environment of an active railway, would have been largely prohibitive.
The consortium is excited to be transferring the benefits of this technology from other sectors, onto trains in Great Britain, to reduce train breakdowns and improve train on-time performance for passengers as well as reducing maintenance costs for train operators.