The Future of Rail Surveying How high-accuracy drone surveys look set to change the way rail track data By Malcolm Donald, Head of Rail at Plowman Craven is captured With a highly-publicised commitment to creating a ‘Digital Railway’, the challenges facing Network Rail are considerable. With more than 20,000 miles of track and 40,000 structures, all of which require continual inspection, monitoring, renewal and maintenance, and a rail system already operating at 200% of planned capacity, the need for
possessions to enable surveyors to manually measure and observe the entire track and the surrounding rail infrastructure. With enormous pressure on the rail network already and so many But how to capture this information more quickly, with bottlenecks, the limitations of the less disruption and in a much safer current system are all too obvious. way? Traditional survey and With surveys usually at the front of inspection methods typically a project, any delays in accessing require track closures and the tracks can bring the entire accurate survey data that can be more easily integrated in to existing railway design workflows has never been greater.
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