Tie (Sleeper) Inspection

Wood (timber) and concrete tie systems degrade over time and thus require efficient and objective inspections in order to ensure their integrity. Wooden ties can develop increasingly large splits, decay, become excessively plate cut and fail to properly hold gauge and surface. Concrete ties can develop both longitudinal and transverse cracking, and chipping from derailments and tamping operations. As well, both wood and concrete ties can become skewed (no longer perpendicular to the rails) such that they may be widen gauge or making it difficult for tamping operations.

Pavemetrics’ LRAIL simplifies the tie inspection task by using Artificial Intelligence to analyze both 2D and 3D data in order to more accurately detect and report tie count, position, material, surface cover, tie skew, plate cut, wood tie grade and concrete tie grade.

Additionally, through the LRAIL’s Change Detection algorithms, changes in tie grading and skew between repeat runs can be automatically detected and reported pointing track maintenance crews to the portions of the network that are most in need of attention.