New Asset Health Capabilities

Bad Actor Alert

Railinc’s Bad Actor identification capability utilizes industry Line-of-Road Failure data to identify cars that could cause undesired emergency stops (UDEs). Railinc can identify the common cause earlier, helping the industry avoid millions in related costs annually. In 2017, Railinc created an industry alert that identifies these bad actors and facilitates the remediation of issues that prevents failures.

Hot Bearing Detector Data Sharing

The Hot Bearing Detector (HBD) Data Sharing capability allows detector owners to extend their HBD detector network across interchange points to improve bearing failure trending. Utilizing data standards, a common message format and common data sharing technologies of the Inspection Quality Platform, this capability can save the industry millions of dollars by preventing derailments caused by bearing failures.

Data Platform Migration Accomplishments Continue

In 2017, Railinc completed the second year of a three-year program to move to a more robust environment, based on Hadoop technology. This change is enabling reduced costs, supporting new use cases and increasing data analytics capabilities.

Accomplishments for 2017 include establishing a secondary data center environment and implementing replication from the primary data center, migrating seven applications and historical data to the data platform, and implementing a metadata management tool. These successes position Railinc to support customers with more and better data insights.

AskRail^® Becomes the Single Industry Solution

The AskRail^® mobile app provides emergency responders with immediate access to real-time information about railcars carrying hazardous materials on a train. Using the app, they can identify the contents of any railcar carrying hazardous materials in North America, find emergency contact information for Class I railroads and Amtrak, and make informed decisions about how to respond in the event of a rail emergency.

In 2017, AskRail became the single industry solution for first responders to access rail data outside of contact with crew and other railroad personnel, and the number of AskRail users grew to 18,000.

Chicago Clear Path^™ System Expands, Increases Velocity Through the Terminal

Railinc’s Clear Path^™ technology provides railroad personnel in Chicago visibility into actual geographic train locations, integrates train planning activities, helps manage traffic flow and helps railroads make important operational decisions to keep rail traffic moving. It includes a multi-layered geographic digital map of the entire terminal, including tracks, yards, corridors, trackage rights and maintenance responsibilities.

Clear Path delivers significant value to railroads and to the rail ecosystem. Project work in 2017 helped to increase velocity, reduce cost and maximize asset utilization.

• The system was expanded to accept dispatch data one crew change point outside Chicago. The additional visibility enables better planning through more complete information and the identification of stopped trains.
• Railinc introduced development of advanced "headlight metrics" for corridor forecasting, improving asset utilization by providing more information to support proactive route planning.
• Railinc developed advanced metric visualization tools for trend analysis to help to reduce the number of stopped trains and inform strategic decision making, leading to reduced costs.