Monitoring Sliding Train Wheels over the web.
In slippery conditions, such as where snow, ice or leaves
are on the line, trains are in danger of skidding along the
tracks. This has serious safety implications.
It also results in damaged wheels: the area in contact with the track
being ground flat. These deformed wheels, predictably, are expensive
to replace. A British train operating company wanted to quickly deal
with skid conditions, and needed to know when and where wheels
were slipping. They chose Windmill Remote software to do this,
as it let them view live data in ordinary web browsers.
The Windmill system monitors the wheel-slip-detection mechanism
on the train (which is similar to anti-lock brakes in cars). Windmill
also reads a GPS receiver: using satellites to pinpoint the location
of the slippage. As well as this information - the state of the traction
control, braking control wires, wheel speeds, bogie dump valves
and time are all recorded and transmitted to an Internet server.
Windmill saves data on the server in a series of files; each file holding,
say, data from one week or one month. This prevents the data file
from becoming too large, and minimises downloading time. When
Windmill receives a request from a browser, it presents the data in a
series of web pages. Railway engineers can choose to see live
information, or historical data and a calendar of wheel slip events.
Normal users can only view information. More senior staff, though,
can download logged data files, change logging conditions and set
new telephone numbers to be dialled in case of alarms. They can
import the downloaded data into Excel, or other Windows program,
for analysis and report generation.
The Windmill system lets the train operating company know immediately
where problems are occurring and quickly take remedial action.
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For more information, please contact :-
Windmill Remote Systems
Email: sales@windmill.co.uk
Web: www.windmill.co.uk
January 2001
