NAS Provides Remote Monitoring Solution for CSX Transportation Quiet Zone

CSX Transportation awarded NAS a contract in 4th qtr 2006 to provide a remote monitoring solution for 12 grade crossings located on CSX's Blue Island Subdivision located in Chicago Illinois. The quiet zone corridor involved installation of 4 quadrant gates along with NAS Universal Data Analyzers (UDA) at each of the sites.  The sites are equipped with non licensed VHF data  radios for data transmission to a TCP/IP radio base station. The base location interfaces by means of CSX intranet  to NAS's Railway Works (RWW) Maintenance Management system located in CSX's Jacksonville based maintenance control center.

RWW provides instantaneous notification of wayside alarms and critical proactive maintenance information on each of the sites to maintenance personnel located throughout the CSX system.  Problems are diagnosed  within seconds allowing CSX to quickly respond to problems on the corridor. System operation is diagnosed 24/7 by the analyzers identifying problems prior to the problems becoming safety issues.

 Utilizing high speed VHF radio modems operating on non licensed spectrum allows CSX to eliminate recurring data transmission costs and take full advantage of the remote analysis capabilities of the field analyzers. Direct connect terminal interface via RWW allows CSX personnel the capability to interface directly to the field  analyzers via TCP link for access to real time crossing data. In addition remote control capabilities can be initiated from the central system for remote diagnostics of each of the field locations.  With expansion of the system field locations will communicate using various telemetry techniques including VHF data radio, 3G and 900 MHZ taking full advantage of the extensive communications infrastructure located on the CSX properties.

CSX in addition contracted NAS to implement NAS Ground Fault Detectors as part of a pilot program to integrate automated testing at each of the facilities. The UDA in conjunction with the NAS ground fault detector performs automated monthly inspections on a 28 day interval at each of the crossings. Inspection data is automatically transmitted and processed by the Railway Works data base server.

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