ITALY: Regional operator Trenord and MerMec have introduced a health and diagnostic tool known as Trainscanner.
The technology is intended to assess automatically the health of external components, and it was launched in early October at the Expo Ferroviaria trade fair in Milano. The two partners had agreed to develop Trainscanner under a contract signed in July 2023.
The Trainscanner iniative will see eight Automated Train Inspection Stations installed at strategic locations across the Lombardia regional network, mostly at the entrance of the Trenord maintenance depots. The aim is to enable the customer to inspect trains while they are in service, reducing maintenance efforts and costs while collecting regular data on the train condition to optimise maintenance planning and increase the trains’ availability.
Each automated station can measure and inspect the condition of wheels, brakes and pantographs, and assess general wear and tear on the vehicles. Jacopo Vincenzi, Product Line Manager at MerMec, told Railway Gazette International that the company ‘was the only contractor in this project, managing the whole supply, including civil works and erection of supporting structures: poles and gantries’.
The first sets of equipment were installed at the Trenord depots in Novate Milanese, Iseo, and Cremona at the start of October. ‘The train is scanned every time it enters or leaves the depot, that is, every two or three days’, reports Giuseppe Bianco, manager of the Trenord workshop at Novate Milanese. ‘This increases the amount of data available, information that can help analyse the life of the various components and manage supplies and inventory.’
The operator adds that inspection tasks that were typically undertaken by two workers over the course of a single shift totalling 16 h can now be completed in a few seconds, with condition data available immediately in digital format. At the Novate facility alone, 100 pantographs, 1 600 wheels and the same number of brakes are scanned each day. If an anomaly is detected, an alert is triggered, allowing staff to assess the best course of action.
