Presentations and Papers
Summary - Implementation of a New Wheel Management Process at RailCorp
Presenter: Shane Doyle
Wayside monitoring was implemented in the Sydney metropolitan area in Australia in response to rail damage and environmental concerns. Wheel condition monitoring is well established in the freight industry but the implementation on a suburban passenger network highlighted unique problems and requirements. The successful implementation required changes to the instrumentation and different strategies for using the data. These included classic process control and improvement methods that involved engineers from RailCorp’s Rolling Stock Division working closely with the maintenance depots. The program included the initial recovery and control phases, the search for root cause, the steady state management phase and finally the new early intervention strategies that involve using a "step-change" alarm method as well as trim blocks to service the wheels early and avoid the need for wheel machining. The results have been a reduction in rail damage and noise pollution, a controlled process with few new wheel defects and improved passenger comfort and perception of quality.
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