Wayside Train Monitoring Systems: A State-of-the-Art and Running Safety Implications

Abstract

The appearance of railway undertakings in Europe led to an enormous increase in rolling stock operators: mainly in the freight sector. To keep these vehicles under control, and to limit as much as possible the consequences of accidents arising from failures, fires, exceeded gauge, etc., it is necessary to consider the possibility (and the need) to check rolling stock conditions from stationary measuring equipment, i.e. at wayside train monitoring systems (WTMS). After the analysis of the literature on railway accidents, this paper aims to classifying safety-related and maintenancerelated train-environment interactions, discussing the implications and the capabilities of existing WTMS systems.