Union Switch & Signal, Inc.

Theo C Giras

Joseph A Profeta

Barry W Johnson

Dario Romano

Joseph P Elm

Robert A Peterson

Michael E Colbaugh

Daniel R Disk

C Franklin Boyle

D Todd Smith

Christopher S Detka

Robert G Brown

Nikos Andrianos

Larry C Mackey

The invention provides for a cab signaling apparatus and method for use on board a railway vehicle propelled on a set of spaced rails by a traction motor. The cab signaling apparatus may reduce a noise component within a signal having a primary cab signal component and reduce a cab signal component within a signal having a primary noise component. The cab signaling apparatus may further include an adaptive filter to cancel the noise component within the signal having a primary cab signal component without specialized tuning of the cab signaling apparatus. The cab signaling apparatus may include a false code monitor for identifying a true cab signal code and a track signal monitor for identifying a true cab signal in the presence of noise.

Cab signaling apparatus and method

A railway car retarder mechanism that employs linear electromagnetic induction to precisely accelerate or decelerate a railcar. The retarder mechanism includes a plurality of linear induction stators having a spaced plurality of primary inductors, a controllable power source electrically connected with selected ones of the primary inductors, a controller for controlling the electric current transmitted to the respective primary inductors by the controllable power source, and a sensor for sensing selected railcar parameters and transmitting those parameters to the controller, so that the speed-corrective forces applied by the retarder are proportional to these parameters. The controller regulates the magnetomotive force which is imparted upon a selected one of a plurality of railcar wheel sets, and is connected with each controllable power source. In some embodiments, the sensor include at least a portion of fiber-optic cable, which cable can be disposed proximate to a predetermined length of track rail.

Railway car retarder system

A method for selecting and responding to a malicious fault in a reconfigurable electronic apparatus that can perform multiple tasks, and that has fault processing for counteracting a class of faults which can generally cause the apparatus to fail during the execution of a preselected task if the fault processor is unavailable and to which class the malicious fault can belong. The reconfigurable electronic apparatus can be a fault processing system, which can be an interlocking control circuit, or a combinational circuit. The method includes constructing an information flow representation of at least a portion of the apparatus executing the preselected task of interest; applying a preselected fault representation to the information flow representation and producing multiple input error conditions corresponding to at least one preselected output condition, the preselected fault representation including recursive reverse implication and, where reconvergent fanout occurs, a forward consistency check; selecting from the aforementioned multiple input error conditions at least one fault condition corresponding to the class of faults; injecting the at least one fault condition into the information flow representation and producing a malicious fault condition representative of said malicious fault; and modifying the apparatus responsive to the malicious fault condition, thereby counteracting the malicious fault. The malicious fault can belong to the class of faults occurring during execution of the preselected task by the apparatus and causing the apparatus to fail during such execution.

Malicious fault list generation method

A linear induction rail switch mechanism having at least one linear induction motor (LIM) for transversely thrusting a switch track from a first position to a second position. To reduce the frictional forces during transverse movement, the switch mechanism can be levitated from the underlying structures. The switch can have at least one controllable power supply which may supply electric power to an individual LIM or groups of LIMs, which may be three-phase motors. The switch may include a vital controller which is connected to at least one controllable power supply. The vital controller responds to at least one of a feedback signal from a controllable power supply, a feedback signal from a LIM, a feedback signal from a switch track, and a remote signal. The LIM may include a primary inductor which is affixed substantially rigidly to the ground and a secondary which is affixed to the switch track. In some embodiments, the secondary may be a ladder secondary. When the LIM is energized, the ladder secondary becomes magnetically attractable to the primary inductor, and thus the ladder secondary becomes movable responsive to the magnetic field generated by the primary inductor. The controllable power supply used with the switch can include a solid state power converter having a controlled output voltage, which may employ a pulse-width-modulation scheme. The solid state power converter may be a variable-voltage, variable-frequency converter, although a variable-voltage fixed-frequency converter also may be employed.

Railway switch mechanism

A hazard predictor that processes both rail and superstructure measurements to predict some potentially hazardous conditions on a railway structure. Measurement is collected in real time with the aid of fiber optic sensor based linear array mesh, and processed with a neural network. Sensors placed under the rail and sensors placed laterally of the rail provide data collection in real time both during occupied and unoccupied periods. In some embodiments the measurement data is compressed into two signatures which can be represented as two vectors. The collinearity of the vectors and the angle between the vectors are utilized to interpret the data as to track conditions. The angle between the descriptors can be used to predict the severity of degradation of the structure. The predictor can be used to manage maintenance of the structure and interface with existing railway signalling equipment to provide traffic management.

Railway structure hazard predictor

A railway traffic control system in which accurate vehicle information is effectively available in real-time to facilitate control of traffic flow. Unlike prior art methods of precisely monitoring train location, the current invention is dependant only on equipment on-board the vehicle and position updates provided by external benchmarks located along the track route. The system's dynamic motion capabilities can also be used to sense and store track rail signatures, as a function of rail distance, which can be routinely analyzed to assist in determining rail and road-bed conditions for preventative maintenance purposes. In presently preferred embodiments, the on-board vehicle information detection equipment comprises an inertial measurement unit providing dynamic vehicle motion information to a position processor. Depending on the amount and quality of apriori knowledge of the vehicle route, the inertial measurement unit may have as many as three gyroscopes and three accelerometers or as little as a single accelerometer. To minimize error between benchmarks, the processor preferably includes a recursire estimation filter to combine the apriori route information with movement attributes derived from the inertial measurement unit.

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Allegheny County, PA, United States of America

Theo C Giras