Canadian Railroads > WILD Detectors

A few years back it seems CP took out or decommissioned some of their scales. They have now put in around 20 Wheel Impact Load Detectors or WILD Detectors in Canada and the U.S.. I was wondering if anyone knows what company supplied CP with the WILDs. They detect defects in wheels like flat spots and also imbalanced or overloaded cars. I attached a link to a short video below, I thought was interesting. One of the companies that make the WILD detector say it can detect imbalanced cars at speed between 50 to 300 kilometers an hour. Not that Canadian trains travel near the top end of that scale. I just have to question the accuracy of anything that can weight a moving car? Does anyone know more about these scales?  


 

Let's start with the background.  Canadian railways installed weight-in-motion scales at their hump yards during the 1960's.  These were located just over the crest of the hump and gave information about car weight for the purpose of determining retarder settings that would brake the car allowing it to coast to stop against the cars in the bowl track.  The idea was to protect lading by preventing a car from rolling down the hump too quickly and crashing too hard into the parked cars below.  Even during these years cars were still manually scaled at their point of origin if a scale was available.

WILD detectors were originally a CN, not a CP, development.  CP followed suit but were not the originators.

Canadian National had a very active and highly respected Techincal Research department.  WILD detectors were invented to protect rail, not to specifically weigh cars.  Their purpose was to flag flat wheels before thay had a chance to break rails and damage track.  The WILD detector alerted the dispatching office (not the train crew) when a flat wheel of sufficient severity passed over the detector.  The RTC (Dispatcher) would then contact the train and impose a speed restriction on the train or in severe cases require the train to proceed slowly to the next siding or back track where the offending car could be set off.  Accordingly, broken rails which were costly and time consuming to repair were avoided.

The WILD detectors also flagged overloaded cars such as scrap gondolas and container cars.  Again, this was to protect the track.  An overloaded car would be set off, have some of its load removed and the customer billed for the work.

While it is possible to get cars weights from WILD detectors this was not their primary purpose.  I don't know if the weights from a WILD detector can be used for legal commerce i.e. billling.  I suspect not.

Like the highway weigh scales for trucks which are intended to prevent road damage, the primary purpose of a WILD detector is to protect the track, particuarly the rail.

KG



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/16 08:57 by kgmontreal.

I did not know the history behind the WILDs

Thank you.

A couple years or so before I retired, last trip was March 21, 2009, CN installed a WILD Detector at MP 133.3 South Bend Subdivision. There was never any information put out about it. The last Time Table I have is dated 2011, and I cannot find any information in it about this WILD Detector.

But, my understanding is this thing sends information to Edmonton, Alberta, and if it's something serious, Edmonton will contact the Homewood, Illinois, Dispatching Center, and the RTC will then contact the train affected. There were many times we would hear the RTC call a train and relay information about what the WILD found. Most of the time it was reduce speed to 30 MPH and continue to Battle Creek, where the Car Department would inspect the train as it arrived. A lot of the times it could be an open load of scrap that may have shifted in the car. If that was the case, the Car Inspector might OK the car to continue on. Or it may need to be set out to have the load adjusted. These were the easy ones. A boxcar, they couldn't tell just by looking, so most of the time it would have to be set out.

MP 133.3.......Battle Creek is MP 180. A lot, I mean a LOT of times, the information wouldn't reach the affected train until it was coming into the yard.
I never heard any west bound trains get tagged by this WILD Detector.

I've got some photographs of the WILD Detector on the CN at MP 133.3.  There really isn't much to see, except for this one, they put down new rail with concrete ties, about 100 feet or so on each side if the detector.

Ron


Continued....

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These photographs were taken on June 22, 2013.

The only name showing anywhere is shown in this second photograph here.

Ron

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