Event Monitoring Comes of Age: `Predict and Prevent' as Well as `Find and Fix'

Remote monitoring of trackside railway assets has until recently had a deservedly bad reputation. Early systems generated large quantities of unreliable data, and although some simple event monitoring was useful in finding and fixing faults, busy maintainers did not trust the veracity of the data, and in any event did not have the time to collect it nor to analyse it in order to help prevent train delays. However the technology has now advanced to a point where these shortcomings have been overcome, and maintainers are achieving real benefits in terms of train delay minutes and maintenance management. Both remote alarming and event monitoring are in reliable quantity service, assisting maintainers to pre-empt equipment failures on a regular basis, by responding to intelligent alerts on their mobile phones and laptops. The paper differentiates between remote alarming and event monitoring and details how they are successfully being used to prevent train delays. The paper describes the features of the AssetWatch from CDSRail, an example of a 'thin client' early warning system for asset failure