A thermal imaging camera attached to the front of a South Western Railway (SWR) train is helping detect faults on the line before they start causing major delays. The year-long trial also sees a camera fitted underneath the ‘Hotshot’ train to monitor the shoe gear and third rail that provide power for the train.
The images captured will provide engineers with real-time alerts of potential issues such as overheating or faulty connections, improving safety and efficiency, reducing maintenance costs and helping to better manage resources during incidents. On average, the faults that the train will help detect can otherwise cause around 200 minutes of delays. In more severe cases, faults related to conductor rails have led to delays exceeding 2,000 minutes.
As class 450 trains serve routes between central London and Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire and Dorset, the trial is the first time such round-the-clock monitoring has been deployed on the vast majority of the SWR network.