Hacker News Reader

There are special trains with measurement equipment on board, but yes, it sounds to me like every train should be equipped with some basic sensors for anomaly detection.

View on HN

The measurement trains drive slowly in the night.

Not necessarily, the measurement train my company develops can go up to 100 km/h and measure certain rail features every 5mm at that speed.

100 km/h is slow compared to passenger train (even non-high-speed ones). Depending on how packed the schedule is, it might not be possible to analyse track during the day without causing backups.

They can go at high speed:

Germany: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAILab

Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Yellow

France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF_TGV_Iris_320

China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_railways_CIT_trains

UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Measurement_Train

Indeed!

> Line inspection is carried out at full speed, up to 270 km/h or 168 mph on the Tōkaidō Shinkansen and 285 km/h or 177 mph on the Sanyō Shinkansen

Italy: https://decode39.com/3045/diamond-fs-diagnostics-train-luigi...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com