Wayside detector devices, over the years, have proven to be valuable assets to a railroad in enhancing safety and improving efficiencies. Currently, devices such as hot box detectors, dragging equipment detectors, high car detectors, wheel impactdetectors have routinely prevented accidents or damages from occurring. Some of the detectors were invented in the past out desperation. For instance, bearings in distress are impossible to detect from visual inspection of the trains. Certain outsidedefects such as loose or broken backing rings or end are readily seen. Other defects such as internal brinelling or spalling will be completely invisible to the inspectors. Therefore, hot box detectors which use infra-red detection technology wereinstalled to substantially aid to detect defective bearings. While these detectors are not perfect in the sense they occasionally give false alarms and the spacings are such that there is still a chance a bearing can get hot and burnt-off in between twodetectors, a lot of burnt-off's potentially causing millions of dollars in accident cost were prevented over the years, because of existence of these detectors.With the advent of electronics in terms of its sophistication, capability, cost and miniaturization, a lot of interests arose recently to other invent wayside devices to further improve efficiencies and reduce manual inspection requirements of freight car components. The integration of these devices between each other and their integration into the railroad maintenance system increase the potential for efficiency gains.At this juncture, Conrail has re-examined the usage of electronics and has advanced the use of technology in fault detection of freight car components. This paper gives an account of freight car failure detection devices and what are currently availablein service and what are being developed in 1998. Conrail's integration of some of the devices and the automation of reporting the faults and rerouting of defective cars will also be presented.
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