International Journal on Communications Antenna and Propagation (I.Re.C.A.P.), Vol. 7, N.

6
ISSN 2039 – 5086 November 2017
Special Issue on “ICMESCoE-2017”

Railroad Track Maintenance Device

P. N. Kota, Aditya Pal, Amit Vitekar

Abstract – Railway track inspection systems play a crucial role in maintaining railway networks
safe and to avoid dangerous accidents. In developing countries like India and Africa, most of these
inspections are carried out manually. This is done by trained railway employees walking along the
track with the equipment in search of defects. Its status is then written down in a report. This
operation structure is not viable because of the amount of time required, its accuracy and absence
of objectives. Enhancements for the current manual inspection process are possible by using
advanced sensors and embedded systems. The implemented system is designed to automatically
inspect the tilt angle, the space between the tracks and the distance covered during the inspection.
The system captures data from the sensors which are placed on the axle of the rail inspection car.
The data readings are processed through a microcontroller and are recorded in metric units. The
system simultaneously displays data on an LCD panel in real time. Copyright © 2017 Praise
Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved.

Keywords: Track Maintenance, Digital Inspection

Nomenclature This system is implemented in most developing

countries of the world. The manual [4] oriented
LCD Liquid Crystal Display inspection of tracks is much familiar and it is
I/O Input/output implemented in most railroad authorities. In India, the
PWM Pulse Width Modulation process of checking the angle of banking and distance in
UART Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter railway tracks are still carried out manually.
ICSP In-Circuit Serial Programming
IDE Integrated Development Environment
PSD Position Sensitive Detector
IRED Infrared Emitting Diode
IoT Internet of Things

I. Introduction
India has a 67,312 km long railway track route
running across the country. In Future, 25000 km long
new tracks are supposed to be laid down by 2020. The
Indian Railway plays the role of catalyst of the Socio-
Economic development for the country [1]-[2]. Railways
need to manage frequent inspections of their tracks to
sustain safe and efficient transport operations. The
process of rail track inspection requires enormous
monetary funds, human resources and engrossed track Fig. 1. The conventional measurement system of tracks
capacity. However, maintenance works on tracks are
almost always conducted without interrupting the usual This manual process has the following disadvantages.
transit of trains [1]-[19]. Workers on maintenance sites The railway administration trains its employees on
are therefore exposed to the danger of injury or crash in how to use the detection equipments, but sometimes an
case of undetected train transit [3]. employee is not able to detect errors because of the
Fig. 1 shows the current mechanism used in carelessness, and this gives rise to the case of human
developing countries like India to check the tilt angle of error. In India, 87% rail accidents occur due to human
the tracks. This system uses principles of a spirit level. It error, 51% out of which occur due to the failure of
plays a significant role in railways to avoid the railway staff [5].
derailment of the train because it is the primary task of An innovative approach based on image analysis and
inspection and provides the angle of banking of the track. processing to reconstruct the whole track profile is

Copyright © 2017 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved https://doi.org/10.15866/irecap.v7i6.13605

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 P. N. Kota, Aditya Pal, Amit Vitekar

presented in [6]. At prototype level, it has been showed II. Proposed Work
the possibility of real-time functioning with good
accuracy, using algorithmic pre-processing and neural Fig. 2 shows the block diagram of the implemented
processing. It is presented a methodology to optimize the digital track maintenance system. The descriptions of the
processing system regarding the tradeoff between sensors being used for the system are shown as in the
accuracy and computational complexity. The presented following subsections.
methodology was general and not only related to the
described application, enlightening how a strong modular DC Power Supply
analysis at system level is effective in maintaining a 16X2
complex overall system behavior with simple LCD
functionality in the modules.
Alippi, et al. [7] presented an innovative approach to ARN
track profile measurement. A real-time image Arduino Mega
TS2D 2560
processing- based technique was adopted to reconstruct
and measure the profile by analyzing a laser-scanned
CCD-camera image. An accuracy of the same magnitude Buzzer
of the track roughness was achieved with a still Sharp
monitoring system. However, the results for the system GP2Y0A710K0F
on board of a moving rail carriage were not obtained and
it was focused only on one characteristics of the rail
track. Tachometer
Using the conventional methods for maintenance of
rail tracks is not feasible in this generation.
This type of monitoring system is unsatisfactory Fig. 2. Block Diagram of Track Maintenance Device
because it is slow and lacks of accuracy. This slows the
process of locating faults. Heavy traffic demands a II.1. Arduino Mega 2560
periodic inspection and more stringent maintenance
requirements but railroad employees have less time to The Arduino Mega 2560 [12] is a microcontroller
accomplish them [8]. motherboard which supports the integration of different
To avoid these types of incidents, an automatic sensors. It is based on ATmega2560. It has 54 digital I/O
railway track maintenance system is needed [9]. The pins, 16 analog inputs, 4 UARTs, a 16 MHz crystal
objective of this paper is to check the workability of oscillator, an ICSP header and a USB connection. The
using sensors technology to make track inspection more main purpose of using the Arduino Mega 2560 board is
efficient and effective. Hence, to reduce delay, the its easy interfacing with different sensors and the
system deals with the automatic detection of the banking integrated development environment (IDE) software that
angle, the space between the tracks and the area covered is being provided with the board to program the different
during the inspection. The device will present data on an sensors and board. The Arduino Mega 2560 serves as a
LCD in real time and will also store data simultaneously. great development platform for 8-bit microcontroller
In this way, the system increases inspection projects. What is great about the Mega and the Arduino
efficiency, reduces the time required and gives more family as a whole is the ability to transport the code from
accurate and frequent information of the railway track. one hardware solution to another and even to customize
That increases the accuracy and efficiency of PCBs.
maintenance, makes it more reliable and data is digitally
stored thus avoiding human error. II.2. Aeron Sensor
Lamedica, et al. [10] illustrated a methodology for the
prediction of the service quality of a high-speed railway Fig. 3 shows the tilt sensor used in this project, the
system as a function of reliability and maintainability of Aeron TS2D Digital Tilt Sensor [13], which has an
the subsystems forming a transit system, failure recovery accuracy of 0.1-degree and also provides dual-axis
policy of failed subsystems and degraded conditions of stability over time and temperature. Moreover, it is a
traffic management, quantifying the delay trip acceptable concise cost-effective tilt sensor, which gives accurate
by passengers. tilt information about the roll axis. It provides output
The training technology might seem to be advancing (digital formats - RS232, RS485 MODBUS RTU) in the
at a slower pace as a suburban train service paving its static or non-accelerated environment. Initially, solar
way from one station to another, but with the emerging tracking devices used optical encoders that made them
of new technologies in the field of electronics (mainly in monotonous to set the correct angle and also caused a lot
embedded systems), it is getting easier for the locomotive of wear and tear of the mechanical devices. It is a solid-
industry to use these technologies at their best not only to state device which can be easily deployed without
automate the processes but also to ease the process of making any mechanical modification. The device is also
error detection, hence reducing human efforts [11]. free from maintenance. The purpose of selecting the

Copyright © 2017 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved Int. Journal on Communications Antenna and Propagation, Vol. 7, N. 6
Special Issue on “ICMESCoE-2017”

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 P. N. Kota, Aditya Pal, Amit Vitekar

Aeron digital tilt sensor is its high accuracy. With such II.4. Tachometer
high accuracy, it becomes easy to detect the
As the locomotive moves ahead detecting errors at
misalignment between the tracks, which can cause the
different angles and levels, the other important
locomotive to derail. Moreover, minute errors are
phenomenon that needs to be tracked and stored is the
calculated in degrees, so that they can be quickly fixed
distance traveled by the vehicle. The reason behind it is
and save a lot of human efforts to detect the errors and
the further development and enhancement of railroads.
fix them.
The use of railways for transportation and
commutation is rapidly increasing. It is needed that the
rail network adequately copes with the ever-increasing
public demand. A distance sensor is used for tracking the
distance traveled by the vehicle.

II.5. Display
In order to track and measure errors, a display 16×4
Standard Hitachi HD44780 has been used, having a
compatible interface and easy connection. The LCD will
display data in real time so that the operator can carry out
the operations if the track has defects.
Fig. 3. ARN TS2D Sensor

III. Implementation
II.3. Distance Sensor
The whole purpose of designing this device is to make
One of the most important phenomena in track the process of error detection in track maintenance easy
inspection is to maintain the distance between two and to get results in digital form [15]-[16]. Fig. 5 shows
wheels. In India, the distance between the two wheels of the proposed system.
any locomotive must be maintained at 1,676 mm. Thus,
in order to maintain this distance and reduce errors, the
SHARP GP2Y0A710K0F [14] sensor shown in Fig. 4 is
used. This sensor measures the distance between the two
tracks when the inspection van is running and reads the
distance between the two wheels. The range is between
100 and 550 cm. It is an integrated sensor consisting of a
PSD, IRED and signal processing circuit. The important
factor of this sensor is that the diversity in the reflectivity
of the object, the environmental temperature and the
operating duration do not affect distance detection due to
the adoption of the triangulation method. It can also be
deployed as a proximity sensor.

Fig. 5. Testing of implemented system

With the integration of all sensors on the

microcontroller motherboard, as described above, these
results can be achieved. In the current system, the
operator has to drive the rail inspection device to remote
places where new tracks have been laid and check the
banking angle and the distance between the two tracks.
Thus, in order to reduce this human effort and get
more accurate results, this device comes into picture.
The device is powered by an industrial power supply
of 12 volts, 9 volts and 5 volts which will power the
digital tilt sensor, the microcontroller motherboard and
the LCD display (see Fig. 2). The industrial power
Fig. 4. SHARP GP2Y0A710K0F
supply was specifically designed to power all these
devices keeping in mind the power needed for the
working of all these devices. Once the power is supplied

Copyright © 2017 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved Int. Journal on Communications Antenna and Propagation, Vol. 7, N. 6
Special Issue on “ICMESCoE-2017”

478
 P. N. Kota, Aditya Pal, Amit Vitekar

to the microcontroller, the latter is automatically set ON banking angle testing. The conventional readings are
and similarly are the powered sensors. The preloaded taken from the spirit level measuring technique and the
program in the microcontroller is set on a loop, hence it digital readings are taken from the Aeron TS2D sensor.
can immediately show the output as it is turned on. The The sensor was used for measuring the difference on
sensors are set into motion and they start sensing the the x-axis only i.e. the roll axis. The readings were taken
alignment of tracks, the distance between the wheels and during the system testing, each at a distance of 100 m.
also start measuring the distance traveled by the device. Table I shows that the proposed method with the
The operator has to move the device at a constant digital tilt sensor gives an accuracy of 0.1 degrees and
speed (walking pace) and keep an eye on the display to the conventional method accuracy was 1 degree for the
note the fluctuations while moving forward. banking angle.
Fig. 6 shows the flowchart of proposed digital track The digital method provided highly accurate results
maintenance system. The sensors start sensing and send and also recorded data automatically, making the
raw data back to the microcontroller. The microcontroller inspection faster and easier.
reads this raw data from sensors and processes it within Table II shows the track distance measurement
the microcontroller with the code that has been set into it. comparison between the proposed and the conventional
method. The proposed method resolution is 1 cm while
the conventional method gives resolution of 2 cm.
TABLE I
BANKING ANGLE COMPARISON
Sr. No. Digital Method Conventional Method
1. -0.3 0.0
2. -0.3 0.0
3. 0.2 0.0
4. 0.4 0.0
5. 0.5 0.0
6. 0.7 0.0
7. 0.9 1.0
8. 0.4 0.0

TABLE II
DISTANCE BETWEEN TRACKS COMPARISON
Sr. No. Digital Method Conventional Method
1. 1676 1676
2. 1676 1676
3. 1675 1676
4. 1675 1676
5. 1676 1676
6. 1675 1676
7. 1676 1676
8. 1674 1674.5

The distance sensor by Sharp has an accuracy of 1 cm

and it was tested at a standard distance of 1676 mm,
which is the standard broad gauge track size in Central
Railway, India. The system was also checked at night
time and it showed no change in the accuracy of the
results. This made the system feasible to be used at any
time.
Fig. 6. Flowchart of proposed digital track maintenance system

If the readings are out of the default range, then a V. Conclusion

buzzer will be turned on. The LCD will display the data
readings all the way during maintenance. This helps the The recent advances in railroad infrastructure and
operator in immediately fixing the defects and in their implications on track maintenance and stability has
increasing the efficiency and accuracy of the work been studied. The proposed digital track maintenance
performed. system will give a 0.9 degrees of accuracy in banking
angle measurement and 1 cm accuracy in track distance
measurement than the conventional method.
IV. Results In order to improve the safety, accuracy and speed of
railway track maintenance work, a comparative study
The Aeron digital tilt sensor and Sharp distance sensor
about accidents on track maintenance has been carried
were tested at multiple locations on the track to check
out and recognized that many accidents occurred due to
their accuracy. Table I reports the comparison between
human errors. The use of the proposed device can reduce
the digital method and the conventional method of

Copyright © 2017 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved Int. Journal on Communications Antenna and Propagation, Vol. 7, N. 6
Special Issue on “ICMESCoE-2017”

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 P. N. Kota, Aditya Pal, Amit Vitekar

the labor requirement, in order to avoid human error in Ballasted Small Railway Track Under Static and Dynamic
Loadings, (2014) International Review on Modelling and
Indian Central railway system. It also digitalizes data,
Simulations (IREMOS), 7 (1), pp. 59-64.
making it accurate and hassle-free.
The proposed system is installed on an IoT supported
inspection van with an inbuilt motor to drive Authors’ information
autonomously and remotely provide data to the officer in
Modern Education Society’s College of Engineering, Pune, India.
charge of taking immediate action. E-mails: [email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
References
Prabhakar Kota received the B.E (E&TC) and
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480