The unique perspective provided by a bird’s eye view can often reveal issues that go unnoticed on the ground, giving engineers an opportunity to spot potential failures before they happen.
Network Rail took advantage of that opportunity with recent tests of a powerful helicopter-carried camera system, it announced this week (11 March). The infrastructure owner and manager’s air operations team trialled the system, which combines high-resolution photography with laser surveys and near-infrared images, at its test track near Nottingham.
Installed in a pod beneath a Eurocopter Twin Squirrel helicopter, the Multi-Angle Camera System (Macs) covered “many miles” of railway at the Rail Innovation & Development Centre in Melton in a single shift. The project involved multiple missions along the 13-mile route, giving engineers a detailed view of the track and surrounding environment.