Automatic brake shoe measuring apparatus for rolling stock

An automatic brake shoe measuring apparatus for measuring a thickness of at least one brake shoe on a railway vehicle, comprising:

• a camera unit, including:
• a sensor that detects passage of said vehicle over a position on a track and generates an output signal indicative of passage of said vehicle;
• a trigger detector that receives said output signal from said sensor and outputs a trigger signal in response to said output signal;
• a monitor camera that photographs said at least one brake shoe to generate at least one image signal when said trigger signal is received from said trigger detector;
• and
• an image memory connected to said monitor camera that stores said at least one image signal;
• and
• an image processing unit connected to said camera unit, said image processing unit including:
• a computer that extracts at least one image of said at least one brake shoe from said at least one image signal;
• an image processing device connected to said computer that determines the thickness of said at least one brake shoe from said at least one image;
• and
• a display device connected to said computer that displays the thickness of said at least one brake shoe.

A method of automatically determining a thickness of at least one brake shoe of a railway vehicle from an image of said at least one brake shoe fed to a computer, comprising the steps of:

• detecting with a sensor the passage of said moving railway vehicle over a position on a track;
• generating an output signal when the passage of said vehicle is detected by said sensor;
• feeding the output signal to a trigger detector to generate a trigger signal;
• photographing the at least one brake shoe with a camera in response to the trigger signal to generate at least one image signal;
• extracting at least one image of said at least one brake shoe form the at least one image signal;
• determining the thickness of said at least one brake shoe form the at least one image;
• and
• displaying the thickness of said at least one brake shoe on a display connected to said computer.