scope:

INTRODUCTION

Effective condition monitoring is a matter of great interest to many railway authorities at present for two reasons in particular:

• To reduce the total cost of ownership of assets by reducing downtime costs, and

• To improve the overall reliability of the rail network i.e. to reduce train-minute delays.

There are many root causes of train delays. However, due to their critical position in the rail network, track circuits are a particular cause for concern. For example a typical study described in reference [1] showed that 23% of the reported delay minutes were recorded as due to 'track circuit failure'. It is readily apparent that reducing these failures would make a major contribution to train delays and consequent costs.

The Digital Receivers used in the EBI Track 200, 300 and 400 track circuits include a data key and a serial data port which provide access to a range of monitoring and diagnostics data. This Information Sheet describes how this interfaces can be used in a system context to provide effective track circuit condition monitoring.