The problem of deterioration of railroad system, in particular the decay of railroad bridges, has been noted by departments of transportation. Budgets for railroad infrastructure repair and maintenance are limited, but safety of operations must be ensured. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 43: Augmenting Reality for Safer Inspections of Railroad Infrastructure and Operations explores using AR to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of monitor...

Automated detection of locomotive and train air leaks could reduce the time and labor necessary to find air leaks, reduce locomotive fuel consumption and exhaust emissions, and at the same time improve employee safety. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 48: Autonomous Detection of Compressed Air Leaks on Trains details the development of a proof-of-concept system to autonomously detect compressed air leaks on moving trains.

The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 45: Development of a Fatigue Load for Railway Bridges examines the behavior of typical railcar configurations and provides a fatigue evaluation method consistent with the loading behavior of railway equipment on bridge spans.

Spikes, together with tie plates and timber ties, are the dominant track components in North American freight railroads. Recent inspections have identified frequent broken spikes in certain tracks. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 44: Laser-Based Non-destructive Spike Defect Inspection System aims to develop a low-cost, non-destructive and contact-free intelligent inspection system, that is field-deployable on a geometry car, high-rail vehi...

Approximately 1,282 fatalities on U.S. interstate highways in 2020 were due to nighttime road departures. A new ultra-bright retroreflective lane marking tape can save lives as well as offer both a very short payback period and a very substantial benefit/cost ratio over its useful lifetime. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's NCHRP IDEA Final Report for Project 228: A Retroreflective Road Lane Marking Tape 1,000X Brighter than Existing Technology details a new product whic...

Traditionally, bridge inspectors conduct manual inspections or touch the bridges’ surface to feel their transverse displacement. In order to collect displacements from bridges, sensors are added to bridge components. However, sensor installation costs money, has safety concerns, and involves track time. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 37: Measuring Behavior of Railroad Bridges under Revenue Traffic using Lasers and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles...

Thermite weld improvement is important because it is a major concern for the North American railways and it is crucial to meet the network demands in terms of safety, reliability and ridership operations The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 38: Minimization of Weld Failures by Means of Gas and Shrinkage Porosity Reduction seeks to identify new methods for rail life extension by improving the fatigue resistance of thermite welds.

Conventional railroad tunnel inspections are limited by rail bound, manned vehicle constraints at grade. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 42: Railroad Tunnel Inspections for Maintenance and Replacement Prioritization Using Untethered Ground Penetrating Radar and LIDAR Capable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) documents the development of an airborne railroad tunnel inspection technology called SATES, which provides comprehensive, 3D, colorize...

One critical need for monitoring and improving transportation rail safety is early-stage pre-catastrophic-failure detection of rail breakage, or emerging faults under trains. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 36: Onboard High-Bandwidth Fiber-Optic Sensing System for Broken Rail Detection details the development of an innovative onboard real-time broken rail and defect monitoring and detection system based on fiber-optic sensing technology th...

Safety is of principal concern of the railway industry, and track alignment irregularities can pose risks to the safe operation of trains. The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 41: Vibration-based Longitudinal Rail Stress Estimation Exploiting Acoustic Measurement and Machine Learning explores an innovative approach for stress state prediction of continuous welded rail using contactless acoustic sensing and machine learning methods. An impulse-b...