Rail sites are controlled, but the pressure is real
Plant and pedestrian safety for rail sites is harder than it looks, because the work in depots, sidings and trackside compounds is done under time pressure, frequently at night, and with crews that change every shift. TrafficAngel have designed and built PlantShield 360 as an AI camera system that detects a person near any kind of machine and it will warn the operator straight away of any danger, which buys a useful extra second when a depot or possession gets busy.
Rail differs from a building site or a yard in one important way. The safe system of work is everything. A possession is planned to the minute, a controller of site safety manages who goes where, and briefings set the rules before anyone starts, all aimed at keeping people clear of moving trains and machines. Most of the time that control holds. The risk lives in the gaps, such as when a tamper, an excavator and a road vehicle are all moving in the same compound and one person steps the wrong way in poor light.
Solution To Railway Maintenance Safety
What pulls an operator’s attention on a rail site
A few things make trackside and depot work its own challenge.
- Night shifts and floodlighting, which throw glare in one direction and deep shadow in another
- Possessions with a fixed handback time, so the work happens fast
- Several activities sharing one compound, so attention is split between them
- Crews and machines that change often, so good habits are not always shared
On rail plant, the usual visibility aids still do a job. Câmeras, mirrors and audible alarms each add something, and they should stay. Where they fall short is the live question during a manoeuvre, which is whether a person has just moved into a machine’s working area and from which side. In a depot or a possession, that is hardest to answer at night and when the compound is at its busiest.
How PlantShield 360 supports the safe system of work
PlantShield 360 is one part of plant and pedestrian safety for rail sites, not a replacement for the safe system of work. Running that is still the job of the people on site. What the system adds is one more warning at the moment that matters, when a planned control has not quite caught a person on foot. The cameras pick out the human form in zones set for the machine, and the operator gets a warning in the cab with a callout for the side the person is on. The response is the same every time, which brings a level of consistency that is hard to guarantee when the crew is different from one night to the next. A regular operator and a stand-in react the same way, on the first shift of a job and the last. On rail work, where teams turn over constantly, that repeatability counts for as much as the detection itself.
Keeping a clear record for investigations and assurance
Rail runs on evidence. Plant and pedestrian safety for rail sites is judged after the event as much as during it, so near misses are logged, investigated and reviewed in line with the rail health and safety rules the regulator enforces, and assurance teams expect a clear account of what happened and when.
Paired with on-board DVR recording and live video through LiveDrive, PlantShield 360 keeps footage you can pull up after an event, alongside email or SMS alerts and a safe-approach feature that uses a visible thumbs-up signal. For a project or safety manager, that takes a single in-cab warning and turns it into a record that supports investigations, close-call reporting and the assurance trail, even when you are looking after more than one site at once.
Bringing plant and pedestrian safety for rail sites
Better plant and pedestrian safety for rail sites comes down to covering the moment the planned controls cannot, which is a person on foot near a moving machine in poor light or a crowded compound. PlantShield 360 adds that layer of warning without getting in the way of the safe system of work your teams already follow.
To talk through how PlantShield 360 would fit the machines you run in rail depots, sidings or engineering compounds, get in touch with TrafficAngel.
Contate-nosPerguntas frequentes
It suits plant working in depots, sidings, yards and engineering compounds, including during possessions, where machines and people on foot share confined areas.
No. It supports the safe system of work by alerting the operator when someone enters a set zone. The people managing safety on the ground stay in charge.
The cameras are made for demanding commercial conditions, and can operate in very low light conditions and adjust exposure for artificially introduced light, meaning that detections are still reliable throughout day and night. Keeping camera lenses clean is an important part of maintenance to insure full functionality of the system.
Paired with DVR recording and LiveDrive, it keeps footage you can review after an event and use in close-call reporting and assurance.
It suits excavators, loaders, dumpers and similar plant working in rail compounds and depots, with up to four cameras covering the area around each machine.
