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• What exactly does RailAcoustic detect?

  Broken rails first of all — but the same sensors also pick up partial cracks, major internal defects, buckled rails, landslides, floods and track washout. On top of that the system reports train movement and speed, wheel flats, and rail temperature at every node. One installation covers all of it, continuously.

• How does it find a break before a train passes?

  It does not wait for a train. A generator injects a specific acoustic vibration into the rail, and receivers up to 2 km away listen for it. A break or crack changes how that signal travels and reflects, so the fault shows up in the acoustic reading itself — no train has to reach the damaged section for the alarm to be raised.

• How precisely does it locate a fault?

  The track is divided into blocks of roughly 2 km between nodes, and a fault is reported in the block where it occurs. Within that block, the reflected signal narrows it further: the sensor next to the injection point reads reflections coming back from damaged sections about 1 km to each side, which is what pins the location down rather than just flagging the segment.

• How is this different from track circuits or ultrasonic testing?

  Track circuits check electrical continuity, but the rail also carries return current, so they misdetect often and cannot see a partial crack at all. Vehicle-mounted ultrasonic testing is accurate but occupies the line and only tells you about the moment it passed. RailAcoustic is fixed infrastructure listening continuously, and it detects both full breaks and partial cracks.

• Does it work on electrified lines?

  Yes. The system is acoustic, not electrical, so it works completely isolated from the electrical properties of the track — AC, DC or non-electrified lines all behave the same. It is also independent of ballast resistance, which is a common source of trouble for track circuits.

• Will it interfere with existing signalling?

  No. It does not connect to the rail electrically and does not interfere with any other signalling equipment on the track. That is also why it fits alongside an ERTMS migration: as track circuits are removed, the rails are left unmonitored, and this fills exactly that gap without touching the signalling system.

• Is the system actually proven in service?

  It has been running continuously since December 2018 on a high-speed line, with final acceptance passed by cutting the rail at a random point along the equipped section. A second installation covers 11 tunnels across 37 km of slab track, and the technology won an ERCI Innovation Award in 2020.

• How is it installed — does it damage the rail?

  The modules clamp to the outer web of the rail and need no drilling, welding or any other mechanical intervention. They can be fitted and removed without damaging the rail, and no long-term effect on the rail structure is expected. A generator and a receiver sit about a metre apart, repeated roughly every 2 km.

• What does it take to equip a line?

  Three things on site: the rail-mounted generator and receiver pairs, a trackside cabinet housing the processing boards every 2 km, and a fibre-optic link back to the control centre. The control centre itself is one computer running our software, and it can sit far from the monitored section — on the reference line it is 100 km away.

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