Railroad tie plugging system
AssigneeEncore Rail Systems, Inc.
InventorsDouglas Delmonico, Stephen R. Epps, Brandon H. Long, Jacob Schmidt
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Systems and methods for automated repair and maintenance operations on a railroad track comprise a work head that is automatically moved over the railroad track according to a predetermined pattern, such as the movement of an applicator for tie plugging compound according to a predetermined pattern of spike holes. The automated repair and maintenance operations may be coupled to systems and methods for automatically detecting a feature on a railroad track that comprise two or more distance measurement sensors that travel over the railroad track. Features on the railroad track are detected where the distance measured by each sensor falls within two different predetermined distance ranges.
Claims9
A system for detecting a feature on a railroad track, comprising:
- a frame;
- first and second distance measurement sensors mounted on the frame that simultaneously measure respective first and second distances at different points on the railroad track relative to the frame;
- a microprocessor coupled to the first and second distance measurement sensors;
- a memory coupled to the microprocessor;
- and
- a predetermined distance stored in the memory;
- wherein the microprocessor reports a first value for the first distance measurement sensor when the first distance is within a first range defined relative to the predetermined distance, and reports a second value for the second distance measurement sensor when the second distance is within a second range defined relative to the predetermined distance;
- and
- wherein a feature is detected where the microprocessor returns different first and second values.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.