A method of determining the actual position of a track relative to a fixed point located in a lateral vicinity of the track by using a registering device being mobile on the track includes surveying the position of the fixed point relative to the track. The registering device is moved along the track, image pairs of the lateral vicinity of the track are continuously recorded by a stereo camera system on the registering device and the fixed point is searched for in the image pairs by pattern recognition carried out in an evaluation device. Upon recognition of the fixed point, the position of the fixed point relative to the track is determined by evaluating at least one image pair. This creates the possibility of surveying fixed points in passing with the configuration of the fixed point not being bound to any special form. A measuring system is also provided.

A guide system including a railway rail extending along an axis and including an upper element having a rolling face; a lower element having a bearing face; a connecting element between the lower and upper elements, at least one lateral recess being formed between the lower and upper elements; at least first and second attitude sensors fixed to the rail by glue at respective positions offset along the axis of the rail, the attitude sensors being housed at least partially in the lateral recess; a processing circuit configured to recover attitude measurements supplied by the first and second attitude sensors and configured to calculate a deformation of the railway rail relative to the axis as a function of the recovered attitude measurements.

A method and device for compacting the ballast bed of a track, especially in the region of a switch, comprising a switch tamping machine (1), which is fitted with a tamping unit (4), a lifting and lining device (2) comprising at least one pair of roller pincers (6) and at least one lifting hook (7) for lining the track position, and which is guided in a longitudinally displaceable manner on the machine frame (2) in the longitudinal direction of the machine. In order to provide advantageous lining conditions, it is proposed that a switch component measuring system (3), which is provided upstream of the lifting and lining device (2) in the working direction (C), is provided for the position-dependent measurement of the position of the switch components.

Method for detecting rail switches degradation and failures, the method having the steps of applying a Discrete Wavelet Transform to stored measurement data relative to a switch move to be analysed and obtaining a feature vector associated with said switch move and including Discrete Wavelet Transform coefficients delivered by the applied Discrete Wavelet Transform; comparing the obtained feature vector with feature vectors associated with rail switch moves previously obtained and associating each to a respective health class among several given health classes; and determining a health class for the said switch move to be analyzed by selecting one of the health classes associated with the previously obtained feature vectors based upon the comparison step.

Method for detecting rail switches degradation and failures, the method having the steps of applying a Discrete Wavelet Transform to stored measurement data relative to a switch move to be analysed and obtaining a feature vector associated with said switch move and including Discrete Wavelet Transform coefficients delivered by the applied Discrete Wavelet Transform; comparing the obtained feature vector with feature vectors associated with rail switch moves previously obtained and associating each to a respective health class among several given health classes; and determining a health class for the said switch move to be analyzed by selecting one of the health classes associated with the previously obtained feature vectors based upon the comparison step.

Evaluating railway ballast fouling condition is critical to assessing track conditions and arranging proper ballast maintenance. Because fouled ballast materials with different fouling conditions have different material properties, these properties can be used to evaluate the fouling severity. Various previously developed approaches to estimating fouling conditions often require special sensors or equipment, and well-trained technicians. Recently, convolutional neural network (CNN) based computer vision approaches have performed particle segmentation to obtain ballast grain size distribution. While the coarse aggregate fraction can be evaluated, many such approaches do not segment fine particles. This disclosure is an image analysis approach to directly estimate the ballast fouling conditions. First, fouled ballast images with different fouling conditions are taken as the reference. Then, the RGB color distributions of the fouled ballast images are processed through statistical analysis. A strong linear correlation between Fouling Index (FI) and Variance is found and used to establish an FI prediction model which has been tested and validated by additional fouled ballast samples.

Evaluating railway ballast fouling condition is critical to assessing track conditions and arranging proper ballast maintenance. Because fouled ballast materials with different fouling conditions have different material properties, these properties can be used to evaluate the fouling severity. Various previously developed approaches to estimating fouling conditions often require special sensors or equipment, and well-trained technicians. Recently, convolutional neural network (CNN) based computer vision approaches have performed particle segmentation to obtain ballast grain size distribution. While the coarse aggregate fraction can be evaluated, many such approaches do not segment fine particles. This disclosure is an image analysis approach to directly estimate the ballast fouling conditions. First, fouled ballast images with different fouling conditions are taken as the reference. Then, the RGB color distributions of the fouled ballast images are processed through statistical analysis. A strong linear correlation between Fouling Index (FI) and Variance is found and used to establish an FI prediction model which has been tested and validated by additional fouled ballast samples.

A fastener monitoring device monitoring a fastener of a track on which a railroad car runs includes a processing unit calculating a total number of fastening of the fastener or a total number of detachment of the fastener per unit length of the track as an index value indicating a fastening state of the fastener in the track based on running data of the railroad car and fastening state data of the fastener during running of the railroad car.

A track measuring vehicle for recording a track geometry of a track includes a vehicle frame which has rail undercarriages and is mobile on two rails of a track. The vehicle also includes a first measuring base on which are arranged an inertial measuring unit and, for a position determination relative to each rail, at least one contact-less position measuring device. A lowerable second measuring base has measuring running wheels designed to be set upon the rails and is connected to the first measuring base via compensation measuring devices.

A track measuring vehicle for recording a track geometry of a track includes a vehicle frame which has rail undercarriages and is mobile on two rails of a track. The vehicle also includes a first measuring base on which are arranged an inertial measuring unit and, for a position determination relative to each rail, at least one contact-less position measuring device. A lowerable second measuring base has measuring running wheels designed to be set upon the rails and is connected to the first measuring base via compensation measuring devices.