Estimating railway track geometry using onboard sensors.

The estimation of track geometry is critical for the planning of maintenance operations (tamping), which ensures that track conditions remain within allowable limits throughout the entire rail network. Traditionally, the measurement of track geometry was based uniquely on measurements taken by a specialised vehicle, known as a track recording car (TRC). The availability of TRCs to rail operators is however limited. Recently, onboard systems installed on passenger or freight trains were proposed as a potential additional source of measurements, which could complement the TRC measurements providing estimates of track degradation more frequently. In order to be deployed on a large fleet, these onboard measurement systems need to be inexpensive. On the other hand, their measurement accuracy needs to be sufficient to provide usable diagnostic information. In this paper, we discuss preliminary results obtained on a prototype of such onboard system installed on a TRC. This allows comparing its performance with respect to a TRC and thus evaluating the additional diagnostic value that the system would provide if deployed on a passenger/freight train fleet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]