IntelliTrain improves loco availability and utilisation: the development of onboard computers with network architecture has opened up new possibilities for monitoring locomotive health to help manage maintenance and operations

International Railway Journal, August, 2003 by Mike Knutton

THE Electro-Motive Division (EMD) of General Motors has introduced a new onboard computer platform and wireless communications that make each locomotive a node on the Internet, making critical data available to a railway operator any time and anywhere. IntelliTrain is available for all locomotives regardless of manufacturer.

Using the rapidly expanding commercial cellular networks across the United States and wireless local area networks (LAN) in the vicinity of marshalling yards, IntelliTrain automatically transmits locomotive data to EMD's locomotive management centre in LaGrange, Illinois. Troubleshooting maintenance technicians can proactively address many faults by scanning the information, remotely interrogating locomotives, and sending electronic work orders to maintenance facilities before the locomotives arrive.

IntelliTrain also provides the basic operational data needed to improve locomotive utilisation. This includes train location via GPS satellites, and the level of fuel in the locomotives. It also provides what EMD claims to be an industry-first information system that shows a railway when and where its locomotives are refuelled.

Mr Curt Swenson, EMD's director, market development, provided the rail industry with an update on the first year of IntelliTrain services through a paper presented at the International Heavy Haul Railway conference in Dallas, Texas, in May.

According to Swenson: "Not only have we been able to diagnose problems much quicker, and actually prevent some road failures from occurring, we have made a major breakthrough in preventing the 'no defect found' reports that occur when the train crew sees a problem in operation that cannot be duplicated in the shop."

He added: "With thousands of locomotives operating all across the country, there simply are not enough trained technicians to go to the locomotives. With the IntelliTrain process, the technician may be 1600km away but has access to more than 3000 signals on the locomotive."

Development of IntelliTrain benefited from industry feedback that identified opportunities to improve availability by preventing road failures, diagnosing failures quickly and accurately, and repairing locomotives in running maintenance facilities when possible to keep them out of the shops.

Operators also pointed out that they could improve asset utilisation significantly by knowing the following: exact location of locomotives, the fuel level, fuel consumption, the state of health of all locomotives on the train including trailing and distributed units, and the detailed state of health of systems on the locomotives supplied by third parties. "It is particularly important to know the state of health of a locomotive before assigning it to another train," Swenson asserted.

IntelliTrain is basically a five-state process: remote onboard monitoring, wireless communications, remote diagnosis using an artificial intelligence diagnostics tool called TechPro, alert to the field, and proactive repair.

TechPro is a sophisticated maintenance-level tool for use in the locomotive shop or on the service track to establish the cause of problems and identify the parts and services required to put the locomotive back in service. Technicians were able to use TechPro remotely when the locomotive maintenance centre opened in 2001 to diagnose problems on locomotives thousands of kilometres away.

When a fault code is entered, TechPro automatically links to the IntelliTrain database. It asks the user a series of questions and then provides the possible causes of the fault. Based on the answers to further questions, TechPro zeros in on the most probable cause.

Swenson reported to the conference that in the first six months of using IntelliTrain on a significant number of locomotives, the following results were measured:

* 80% of the potential road failures were "electronically visible" to the experts in EMD's locomotive management centre

* some failure modes were electronically visible seven to 21 days earlier than with previous predictive maintenance methods, and

* nearly 50% of potential failures were identified and fixed without a road failure or a locomotive crew report of a problem.

"These preliminary results suggest that the IntelliTrain process can reduce locomotive road failures by about one third. This includes the benefit of sophisticated predictive maintenance tools that EMD is just starting to use. As these predictive maintenance tools mature further, the reduction in road failures will be even more dramatic," Swenson predicted.

The computer platform, known as Functionally Integrated Railroad Electronics (Fire), uses commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software. This not only avoids the high cost of proprietary systems that have been used in previous onboard systems, but also enables railways to enjoy the high reliability associated with standard hardware and embedded Windows operating systems.

Fire has been highly reliable since it went into series production in 1999. A second generation with lower cost and enhanced capability went into series production earlier this year.