Infrastructure Monitoring Location Positioning

Historically inspection and analysis of ultrasonic rail flaws has been a largely manual activity that required regular intrusive access to the infrastructure. The use of ultrasonic walking stick and hand probe equipment meant that this remained a labour-intensive exercise. Manual inspection also didn’t necessarily identify all the areas of concern on the network as quickly or frequently. As a result, a train borne measurement system was developed and Ultrasonic Testing Units (UTUs) were introduced.

A fundamental part of any train borne inspection process is a method of reliably, repeatably and accurately positioning measurements against a fixed reference. This ensures that maintenance teams are dispatched to the correct location to verify suspect locations identified by the UTUs. The positioning system currently deployed on the UTU fleet has been in existence since their introduction in the early 2000s.

What is now required is a further step change in terms of absolute positional accuracy and a positioning service that further improves service resilience and is capable of supporting future recording system modernisation.