For transit or for freight, the railcars are the workhorses of the industry. Whether it’s people, raw ore, liquid gases, or finished products, the cars must safely and reliably carry their cargo from point to point. Deceptively simple in appearance, railcars are still often complex interrelated systems which must all work together to successfully transport their cargo to its destination. Historically it has been very difficult to impossible to actually track the current condition of all the subsystems (wheels, truck, brakes, body, etc.) of a railcar and their components to assure the operating railroad that the car will operate through at least its next scheduled trip.

IEM’s Car Health Monitoring System provides precisely this capability. Our Smart Adaptable Wireless Sensor nodes can be applied to virtually any component of a railcar and record critical aspects of its performance and environment – strain, vibration, heat, chemical leaks, and others – and then transmit this data to a central node for processing and evaluation. IEM’s Car Health Monitoring technology uses IEM’s WISENet™ architecture to assure that under any condition, from crowded yards to mainline runs or even sitting idle on sidings for extended time, that the sensor will have a means for transmitting their data to the enterprise via some gateway.