Technology Digests / Alternative Broken Rail Detection System Evaluation at FAST®

TD25-009

July 30, 2025
Authors
  • Survesh Shrestha
  • Anish Poudel
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Key Findings

  • Athena’s ARCD system successfully detected 21 out of 32 rail breaks during the 2024 FAST spring and fall operations.
  • Six rail breaks were not detected because the break occurred inside an unmonitored area of special trackwork, over a tie plate, or inside a barred rail.
  • Five rail breaks were undetected when the ARCD system was inoperable due to the system damage caused by a lightning strike, or when one of the nodes was disconnected due to rail changeout.
  • Ten false alarms were related to faulty/ disconnected shunts, environmental issues, and a calibration error.
  • For the Athena ARCD, the probability of true positive was 0.78 and the probability of false positive was 0.00136.
  • The Athena ARCD system is ready for revenue service trials, which will allow MxV Rail to thoroughly test its capabilities and limitations in a real-world revenue service environment.

Alternative Broken Rail Detection System Evaluation at FAST®

Under the Association of American Railroads’ Strategic Research Initiatives program, MxV Rail has been evaluating alternative broken rail detection as a cost-effective replacement for and an improvement over track circuits in territories where Moving Block positive train control (PTC) will be deployed. Secondary objectives are to improve performance and/or increase reliability as compared with conventional track circuits. MxV Rail collaborated with Athena Industrial Services (Athena) to evaluate the performance of Athena’s Advanced Rail Condition Detector (ARCD) system. The ARCD is designed to be an in-track, node-based system that detects rail break and train presence conditions, primarily for “dark territory” applications where sections of running track are not controlled by signal communication systems. The ARCD system was installed in MxV Rail’s Facility for Accelerated Service Testing (FAST®)* loop in December 2023, and its performance was evaluated during the 2024 FAST train operations. *FAST is a registered trademark of MxV Rail BACKGROUND…