Abstract
Condition monitoring of railway tracks is essential in ensuring the safety of railways. In-service vehicles equipped with sensors and GPS systems can act as probes to detect and analyze vehicle vibration. Such trains are known as probe vehicles. Probe vehicles may also dramatically change the current style of rail maintenance, thus contributing to the establishment of safer transport systems. The probe vehicle can change the current maintenance style to focus on locations regarded as essential maintenance areas, utilizing data acquired by high frequency monitoring of actual vibration together with positional information obtained by GPS. Monitoring based on information obtained by the probe vehicle may track detect faults at an early stage, thus contributing to the revitalization of local railways by making maintenance tasks more efficient. In this paper, we report on the results of railway track condition monitoring using in-service railway vehicles.
