A vehicle control system may determine a required tractive effort and/or a required braking effort to propel a vehicle system at a determined speed. The vehicle control system may determine a throttle setting or a brake setting to provide the required tractive effort and/or the required braking effort and communicate a control signal from a remote controller device to an onboard controller device. The vehicle control system may operate a propulsion system at the throttle setting and/or a brake system at the brake setting to move the vehicle system at the determined speed.

Proposed are a synchronous braking control method and system for carriages of a train, that are related to the field of electrical control. The synchronous braking control system includes a main controller, an electric energy conversion controller, and a shunt. During actual braking, the main controller obtains a real-time speed and real-time mass of the train, and determines whether the real-time speed is greater than a set speed. If not, the train is directly braked in a mechanical friction braking mode. If yes, an exciting current of a synchronous brake in each of the carriages of the train is adjusted by adjusting an input voltage of the synchronous brake, and unit braking forces of the carriages are controlled equal by using the adjusted exciting current, thereby realizing synchronous constant deceleration braking of the carriages.

The method comprises the steps of generating speed signals indicative of the angular speed of the wheels of said axle; generating an error signal indicative of the error or difference between a set point speed for the wheels, determined by means of a reference model, and the speed indicated by said speed signals; and generating a driving signal for torque-controlling apparatuses applied to the wheels of said axle, by adaptive filtering of an input signal which is a function of said set point speed, modifying parameters of the adaptive filtering as a function of said error signal, such as to make such speed error or difference tend to zero.

A system and method for reducing the threat of derailment of a train during deceleration is provided. An individualized braking force for each rail car of a train, such individualized braking force being determined by the braking deceleration of the train's locomotive, may be calculated by the rail car's controller and is directly proportional to the mass of the rail car. The controller may utilize the various forces acting upon the individual rail car as measured by a plurality of sensing and measuring devices to dynamically adjust the braking force applied to the individual rail car's brakes. Such a system and method allows for the train to act as a single body mass when decelerating to eliminate rail car pile-up and reduce the threat of derailment.

A system and method for automating railroad maintenance by a tie gang using electronic tie marking (ETM) configured to optimize railroad asset maintenance. The system enables collision avoidance between members of the tie gang performing maintenance on railway assets (e.g., Rails, Ties, Ballasts, Turnouts, Crossings, etc.). The system can generate production numbers for the railway assets and evaluate an asset queue for the tie gang to perform maintenance. The system can utilize real-time updates from the tie gang to optimize work output. The system can provide a customizable user interface to identify, track, and process information related to maintenance of the railroad asset. The system also provides for a heads-up-display (HUD) to notify an operator of relevant information, such as maintenance information, travel indicators, and updated asset queue. The system can identify a next location and calculate an optimum path based on sensor input incorporating machine-specific and environmental characteristics.

Systems and methods are provided for vehicle host interface module (vHIM) based braking solutions and use thereof in trains.

A braking system and method control application of brakes disposed onboard vehicles using brake control devices. The vehicles are in a multi-vehicle system and are associated with different segments of the vehicle system. Brake commands are sent to the brake control devices. These commands direct the brake control devices of the vehicles to concurrently engage the brakes onboard the vehicles to different brake levels based on which of the segments that the vehicles are associated.

An electro-pneumatic control system for braking, an emergency pressure monitoring and control unit providing weight signals, an emergency braking request signal, actual pressure signals, and provides emergency braking request signals, an emergency pressure module generating an emergency braking pressure, a braking control unit providing control signal pairs to generate corresponding braking pressures as a function of a service braking request signal or the emergency braking pressure request signal dependent upon whether the emergency braking request signal indicates an emergency braking request, and an emergency switching device comprising contact pairs which allow the connection of the control signal pairs from the braking control unit to the braking pressure generating modules when closed and prevent this connection of the control signal pairs when open.

A system and method for automating railroad maintenance by a tie gang using electronic tie marking (ETM) configured to optimize railroad asset maintenance. The system enables collision avoidance between members of the tie gang performing maintenance on railway assets (e.g., Rails, Ties, Ballasts, Turnouts, Crossings, etc.). The system can generate production numbers for the railway assets and evaluate an asset queue for the tie gang to perform maintenance. The system can utilize real-time updates from the tie gang to optimize work output. The system can provide a customizable user interface to identify, track, and process information related to maintenance of the railroad asset. The system also provides for a heads-up-display (HUD) to notify an operator of relevant information, such as maintenance information, travel indicators, and updated asset queue. The system can identify a next location and calculate an optimum path based on sensor input incorporating machine-specific and environmental characteristics.

An electro-pneumatic service and emergency braking control system is described, comprising: a switching device arranged to allow the connection of a first group of control and feedback signals from an emergency braking control module to an electro-pneumatic emergency braking module when a monitoring device determines the correct operation of the emergency braking control module and to allow the connection of a third group of control and feedback signals from the service braking control module to the electro-pneumatic emergency braking module when the monitoring device determines the incorrect operation of the emergency braking control module.