In cooperation with the Association of American Railroads’ (AAR) Strategic Research Initiatives (SRI) program, BNSF Railway, and commercial suppliers, MxV Rail (formerly TTCI) participated in and conducted an in-service assessment of locomotive undercarriage thermal inspection systems (LUTIS) also known as “In-Track Thermal Detectors.” Two commercial test systems were installed and tested on the BNSF track near Lenwood, CA. As part of the evaluation, MxV Rail instrumented three BNSF locomotives with onboard thermocouples (TCs) and data loggers to record the real-time temperatures of the major driveline components of the locomotives. The TC data was compared with temperature data from the in-track thermal detectors. Since these systems monitored the same trains in close proximity, results from all systems should be equivalent. The details from this evaluation are described in this Technology Digest BACKGROUND Figure 1.TM failure and teardown showing multiple damages to TM Locomotive traction motor (TM) lockup,…
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