200204 – Szacsvay – ‘CERBERUS’ Level Crossing Monitor and Test System – a ‘Black Box Recorder’ for Railway Level Crossings

Monitoring and logging the performance of critical systems is a practice which is well known in the airline industry, and has long been commonplace in locomotives in the rail industry. In the past two decades advances in digital technology has made the technology cost effective for adoption in other industries, railway signalling among them.

From its conception in 1988, the Rail Infrastructure Corporation has developed its ‘Cerberus’ level crossing monitoring and test system into a mature, safety-validated and fully featured monitoring system for level crossing protection equipment, complete with real-time reporting of fault conditions and facilities to complete the daily crossing test traditionally carried out in New South Wales by individual contractors. While based is based on a standard RIC data acquisition module, the monitor incorporates novel purpose-designed interface hardware and software.