Radar Scanning Safety Equipment??

[vivwatts911]

Hello,

I am wondering if anyone knows of any such technology / equipment that can be installed on trains which scans the tracks for up to a couple of kilometers ahead to alert if there is anything on the tracks?

Something like a radar in a ship which pings but only neeeded to scan the track in the direction of travel...

Keen to hear if anyone has any ideas on this.

Kind regards,
Viv

 

[rebmcr]

I'm not sure it would be possible to configure it to adapt to all the various curves. Then you'd get false positives from trackside equipment & foliage.

 

[carriageline]

I think your trying to solve a problem that isn't there.

From what I can think of, we don't have a daily occurrence of accidents/incidents with trains colliding with things on the tracks (exclude level crossings). So what benefits would it bring?

Alert you to trespassers maybe, but at the same time they could be long gone by the time you get there.

What about lines which are currently under possession, but you are to be routed off of it?

Plus all the false alarms/other trains, bends, terminus stations/buffer stops.

Would you have it as a monitor, or just an alarm in the cab?

 

[Cherry_Picker]

A pair of eyes in the drivers head should suffice for this one.

 

[broadgage]

Dont believe that radar would work for this application.
As posted above there would be so many false alerts from foliage, trackside equipment, structures and trains on other lines as to render it worthless.

In areas liable to rockfalls, trip wires are installed that give warning if rocks have fallen.

Level crossings can be monitored by CCTV, and other places could be monitored if required.

 

[starrymarkb]

Radar works on line of sight, somewhere like Cornwall (1 mile of straight track in the county!) it would be useless because it can't follow the curves.

It works on ships and aircraft because there is very little else to block the beam apart from other ships and aircraft

 

[DD]

Plus the amount of foxes and other animals on the line will be setting of the alarms constantly! I see loads and loads of foxes and other animals on the line!

 

[Hartington]

There are now radar based devices being used to monitor level crossings as well as/instead of CCTV. The issue of radar giving false positives has already resulted in some elements of the systems having to be switched off. In particular there is a LIDAR element which scans for crossing obstructions (e.g. a small child) at very low level which has been giving problems I believe.

 

[michael769]

Radar does not work from moving ground vehicles for the reasons given, even the military does not use it.

The "ping" on ships is actually sonar nor radar, sonar only works in water.

 

[rebmcr]

Radar does not work from moving ground vehicles for the reasons given, even the military does not use it.

The "ping" on ships is actually sonar nor radar, sonar only works in water.

Close-range RADAR (on the scale of metres rather than kilometres) is used in Google's self-driving car prototype.

 

[LexyBoy]

The "ping" on ships is actually sonar nor radar, sonar only works in water.

Or rather, radar doesn't work in water. Sonar works plenty well out of water.

Any such systems require line of sight however which will limit their use on a railway - and as others have said, there are very few accidents which could be avoided with such a system which aren't already covered by existing signalling/safety systems.

 

[michael769]

Close-range RADAR (on the scale of metres rather than kilometres) is used in Google's self-driving car prototype.

It mostly uses a Velodyne 64-beam LIDAR. Some people mistakenly refer to LIDAR as "laser RADAR" but that is not correct as the technologies involved are quite different.

There are RADAR proximity sensors (similar to reversing alarms) but they operate in a range of centimeters and bear no relationship to the type of radar imaging the OP is thinking of.

Ground penetrating RADAR works fine under water (and is well used by the military), but again is not the type of thing the OP is looking for.

 

[vivwatts911]

Thanks all for the ideas. To give some context:

I run a railway business in Saudi Arabia. Lines are generally straight, but we have seen an increase in the number of incidents where a sizable object is on the tracks and comes into contact with the vehicle - camels, tractors, farmers' pick-ups etc

If it is a locomotive, things like camels are no problem, but a passenger train takes quite a beating. where there's a stretch of 2/300kms of straight line through the desert, might this be a solution, even if just to alert the driver? Can't the angle of the radar be limited to say 35/40 degrees centered on the driver's cab?

Thanks in advance,
Viv

 

[rebmcr]

There's hundreds of kilometres of straight line, and the driver can't see camels wandering about near the track in the distance, and slow down accordingly?

 

[fsmr]

Thanks all for the ideas. To give some context:

I run a railway business in Saudi Arabia. Lines are generally straight, but we have seen an increase in the number of incidents where a sizable object is on the tracks and comes into contact with the vehicle - camels, tractors, farmers' pick-ups etc

If it is a locomotive, things like camels are no problem, but a passenger train takes quite a beating. where there's a stretch of 2/300kms of straight line through the desert, might this be a solution, even if just to alert the driver? Can't the angle of the radar be limited to say 35/40 degrees centered on the driver's cab?

Thanks in advance,
Viv

For an application like that, surely forward facing HD video with zoom mounted high up on the cab roof and displayed In front would give the driver a view further along a straight track than with the naked eye if you are going down the innovation route and running on miles of straight line. At the end of the day though, unless the object is already there outside of the braking zone, the train will hit it. Most accidents involving road vehicles and trains around the world on authorised or add hock LCs seem to occur within a few seconds of the vehicle incursion onto the tracks giving no time for a train to be able to stop, unlike of course a driverless road vehicles being currently tested which have stopping time of seconds.

Of course you could always make a sacrificial remote controlled light weight trolley on a radio beam back that shoots off a mile ahead beaming back live images

 

[broadgage]

For the rather specialist application of many miles of straight track in presumably open country I can think of other possibilities.

One would be a lightweight fence or barrier, not so much as to physicly keep out vehicles and animals, but wired with sensors to light a warning signal of cut broken or tampered with.

Or infrared beams that give warning if broken.
Consider posts every few hundred yards with infrared beams from one post to the next, parralel to the track, and also from one post to the next on the other side of the track, i.e. with beam crossing the track diagonly.
That would give warning of most obstructions, and the train driver could then slow suitably.

Or as suggested in a previous post, a high definition TV camera and suitable display screen so as to give a view furthur ahead than the unaided eye.

I doubt that radar would have good enough definition to help. Remember that metal vehicles give a much stronger radar echo than animals. I therefore doubt that radar could distinguish between a pickup truck in a safe place near the track and a camel on the track.

Ensure that drivers have top notch eyesight, and the best available corrective spectacles if needed.
Ensure that train windscreens are cleaned very frequently and replaced if scratched, and that the headlights are of the first qaulity and maintained in perfect working order.
Such measures will help to an extent, and if all else fails, then hitting an obstruction at say 30MPH rather than at say 60MPH is less dangerous. Improved sighting even if not eliminating collisions would reduce the impact speed by giving more braking time.

 

[rebmcr]

Consider posts every few hundred yards with infrared beams from one post to the next, parralel to the track, and also from one post to the next on the other side of the track, i.e. with beam crossing the track diagonly.

Infrared, or even lasers, would have a huge issue with the sun (and possibly sandstorms) in Saudi Arabia. Pretty much anything in the visible spectrum will.

This makes me think though, is the suggestion of radar meant to be used during sandstorms? In that circumstance, perhaps just stop the train, so as not to put convenience above safety?