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Andrew Blakeley-Smith & Paul Webb

Andrew Blakeley-Smith & Associates

R C Wright & Associates

This paper describes the background, evolution, design and construction of a network of Hot Bearing and Hot Wheel Detectors (HBD/HWD) and a Wheel lmpact Load Detector (WILD) and the associated data acquisition and analysis system installed, in its first stage, on the Goonyella line and associated mine branches.

The paper traces the establishment of the primary design parameters from an investigation of bearing failure mechanism and an incident analysis of bearing failures on the Coal and Minerals operation. The design builds on previous analysis of HBD data by BHP Iron Ore to provide reliable data for early intervention to prevent derailments whi!st minimising false stops; because of the range of bearing types and sizes used by QR, the higher level of data analysis was considered essential.

Advantage has been taken of existing QR communications and electrification infrastructure to minimise installation costs and integrate bearing and wheel data, carry out trend analysis and disseminate the results of this analysis to a range of users. Operational issues such as regular stopping points, braking areas and removal of defective rollingstock were also given high priority in finalising the locations of the detectors.

The analysis techniques and architecture of the system are discussed together with the design concepts and interfaces to provide a high level of reliability through use of redundancy and graceful degradation.

The original hot bearing and hot wheel data acquisition has been expanded to incorporate Dragging Equipment Detection and the collection and logging of a range of formerly isolated alarm systems. Data analysis has been enhanced with the inclusion of train running information and consist management information. The merged information is made available to various users via train radio, integration with CTC, e-mail, GSM Short Messaging Service and LAN/WAN database access.

The paper concludes with a description of the debugging and fine tuning during installation and commissioning which inevitably make projects of this nature both challenging and memorable.