Managing the gross weight on rail

The railroad industry is committed to cost effectively reduce the stress state of its infrastructure. As market forces drive up the gross weight on rail, it becomes more necessary to truncate the undesirable upper tail of the load distribution that overlaps the lower tail of the infrastructure strength distribution. One way to achieve this is to cost-effectively weigh the rolling stock and flag the poorly loaded and/or overloaded cars. This paper describes a system that fulfills this goal. When custody transfer terms require, vehicles are weighed in the hump yard or, in the case of bulk commodities, at the point of origin. The former method is not cost or time effective and neither approach detects the weight distribution in the vehicle. Furthermore, only a small percentage of traffic is routed through the classification yards. The authors have contributed to the development of a high-speed, weigh-in-motion system (HS/WIM) that resolves these difficulties by providing railroads with a low cost means of screening the state of the traffic crossing their territory. This paper describes both the working theory behind the system design and the economic benefits gained by monitoring car load distribution dynamically at operational train speeds. Finally, this paper discusses other related issues and potential future improvements of the current system.