Trimble and Railhead Corp. partnership brings real-time remote diagnostics to North American rail markets

Trimble announced that it is partnering with Illinois-based Railhead Corporation to integrate real-time remote monitoring, diagnostics and on-board video to maximize locomotive asset utilization and productivity for railway operators.

This combination will provide a complete picture of rail asset status to improve tracking, safety and operations. As part of the collaboration, Railhead will also offer the Trimble® R2M remote diagnostic system as part of its portfolio in the U.S.

First released in Europe nearly a decade ago, the Trimble R2M system is currently in use with a broad range of large rail operators including South West Trains and Greater Anglia in the United Kingdom, Irish Rail, VR Finland and others. Trimble explains that the system processes multiple data feeds from on-train event recording equipment to deliver fault alerts as they occur to control rooms and repair shops for effective condition-based maintenance and train operations management. With Trimble R2M, the company says railroads know where assets are at all times and can benefit from real-time condition-based reporting on the health status of on-board systems.

Railhead says its high-definition Locomotive Digital Video Recorders (LDVR) hardware provides quality, high-definition video that is reliable and can be used for documentation purposes for compliance and litigation. Its LDVR is Association of American Railroads approved and MIL-SPEC rated for the locomotive environment.

Trimble and Railhead will integrate video data streams from Railhead’s LDVR together with system data feeds from multiple on-train devices using the Trimble R2M system. The companies say the result is a solution that enables railroads to add real-time data to the control room overview, which can enhance the railway operators’ ability to make informed decisions in real time.