With a three-year contract signed and sealed last year
worth £2.6million, Network Rail is introducing Drone technology for track
inspection.
Heliguy, who is a partner of DJI, the world leader of
camera Drones, have undertaken the rail track inspection.
Heliguy are using a fleet of Matrice 200 series V2 and
Phantom 4 RTK mapping Drones to carry out 20,000 miles of rail track, 40,000
bridges and tunnels throughout the network.
So what are the benefits?
With the inclusion of Drone technology, this will not
only limit the level of danger staff can be exposed to, but now that traffic
will not have to be interrupted to carry out track inspections, it will most
certainly reduce the financial impact.
According to Network Rail’s website, the addition of
Drones gathers data of the railways to better understand problem areas and
repair them in a more cost effective way.
The website continues: ‘Using drones for close-up
inspections means we can reach areas that are usually difficult to access.
These include roofs, bridges, coastal areas, the overhead wires that power
electric trains and communication masts. Inspecting the railway by air means we
can keep lines open to train services and keep our people safe because we’re
not sending engineers out on track unnecessarily.’
As we have already touched on, Drones have increased
safety. NetworkRail.co.uk states: ‘One of the major benefits of our new flight
management system will be removing the potential for human failure, which poses
safety risks. With the number of drone flights at the level it is and only
going to climb higher in the future, we need a system like this to manage the
load to ensure we are as efficient and safe as possible. The [flight management
system] will show drone pilots if another drone is operating nearby, as well as
alert the pilot to other potential ground or air hazards in the area of the
flight..’
One area that has shown how beneficial Drones are was
with the Edenbridge landslip in 2019.
The landslip closed down the railway but using Drones created a greater overview of the damaged caused and this meant: ‘The engineers could see how they needed to respond, helping them plan the site's recovery much more quickly. It also meant we could show passengers the scale of the damage and why it would be impossible to run trains for months..’
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