ARTC
LocationAustralia
Project typeGeometry car
ARTC sought to deploy a safer and more technology-driven inspection solution across its railroad network.
01. The requirements
ARTC manages over 8,500 route kilometres of track in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia. ARTC also manages the Hunter Valley coal rail network. Operating primarily freight, grain and coal, the network forms an arterial backbone of the Australian transportation network.
ARTC looked to improve the inspection regime of their diagnostic inspection train by adding an automated Lidar and Imagery system onboard the AK car (measurement train) to add additional inspection tasks that could be completed. ARTC decided to focus the immediate requirements on streamlining and automating the infringement and tracking clearance surveys across the network as the first solution for deployment.
Infringement surveys for any network are costly and generally require workers to access the rail corridor to perform measurements and define the level of infringement. ARTC sought to deploy a safer, more technology-driven inspection solution across its national railroad network.
02. The solution
After a competitive bidding process, Cordel was awarded a 3-year contract to provide automated Lidar capture from onboard the AK Car (diagnostic train), data processing, and select automated data solutions. The solution included a permanently installed, remotely managed Cordel Smartscan Mobile Laser System (MLS) with imagery solution and onboard networking and data storage. The Cordel solution for corridor infringements and Track Clearances enables the automated processing of thousands of KM of MLS data across the 8,500km network and the creation of entries automatically added to the ABB Ellipse Infringement database. With accurate rail AI models for over 50+ asset types, powerful search functions and export capabilities, the Cordel platform helped ARTC perform remote inspection and measurements on their network.
03. The results
The Cordel LiDAR OEM system was installed permanently on the AK car in late January 2020 during a 2-day maintenance window, and the program successfully entered into a 2-month commissioning stage. After two 2-month of commissioning, the appropriate internal engineering waivers were received to allow ARTC to run an automated data capture, processing and output of track clearance and infringement survey data to update and continuously improve the National Infringement Register. The Cordel team is not carrying out the business analysis process to the scope and defining requirements for providing additional data automation solutions using the captured data. In addition to the original scope of work, the Cordel team and ARTC are working collaboratively to identify, expand, and prioritise future solutions throughout the contract term. The additional solutions will include technical upgrades to the AK Car hardware, automatic ballast profiling, level sighting distances, automatic GIS rail centerline creation and updating and reffing the Linear Reference system.