The RailGraph software package is a field deployable rail maintenance planning tool that was developed by ZETA-TECH Associates Inc. for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. This package is part of the rail analysis and planning suite of software; a comprehensive rail life forecasting and maintenance planning system. RailGraph is a graphical tool that provides the user with a graphical display of rail wear, fatigue defects, and limited track geometry data, along with specific information on curves and rail maintenance history. In addition, a projected date of rail replacement is obtained from the Rail Life Forecasting Model, another member of the rail analysis and planning suite.

RailGraph is used by field officers responsible for identifying locations that require rail maintenance. The system provides users with information otherwise unavailable (or difficult to get to) without the aid of a personal computer. With RailGraph, the user has the complete track, traffic, and rail history data available for use in making the most efficient rail maintenance decisions.

The overall operation of RailGraph is based on a relational database that contains all of the pertinent track, traffic, and maintenance data as input. This data includes rail installation history (date, type, etc.), rail inspection history (fatigue defects and wear measurements), forecast rail replacement data, curve data (degree, direction, elevation, etc.), traffic data (annual and cumulative tonnage), and location data (line code and subdivision). In addition to the input data, the user has the ability to edit/add rail replacement records for future rail maintenance plans to a separate data table that can be used for generating reports.

The system is operated through the primary screen shown below. This screen shows the rail inspection data (wear and defect) as a function of location and provides the user with access to the detailed track database as well as to the maintenance planning input screens. The primary plot window shows two years of superimposed rail inspection data (head and gage wear, cant, and center to gage), fatigue defect data (as circles for detected defects and squares for service defects), track gage, and general location data, such as line code, track, milepost, and curve.

Navigation through the data can be accessed by scrolling up or down milepost, or by jumping to an alternate location defined by line code, track and milepost. The data is then plotted dynamically for the defined location.

Detailed data can be accessed for two different sets of data, defects and track data. Defect data is obtained by clicking on a defect while track data is obtained by clicking anywhere along the location baseline.

Clicking on a defect brings up a form that contains information about that defect (see other side). The data includes location, type, date found, and other information about the rail. Data for other defects can be obtained by stepping through the defects using the arrow keys.

Based on the data viewed graphically, the detailed data obtained from the database, and on site observations, the user can make an efficient decision pertaining to rail maintenance for any given segment. Should the user decide that a segment requires maintenance, the relay option can be selected and a form appears (as shown at left) that allows the user to specify details pertaining to the level of maintenance required. This includes rail renewals, transposing, changing sides, etc. The user can specify the length and type of rail required as well as the amount and type of other track material required including ties, plates, fasteners, and even grade crossing material. In addition to the rail maintenance plan, the user has the ability to define the turnout maintenance requirements that fall within a rail maintenance-planning segment.

Rail maintenance is defined from the Curve Relay form and all maintenance planning segments are stored as separate records. These records are contained in a separate data table that is used for generating reports and defining the overall rail maintenance requirements. Each of the data forms (Location and Curve Relay) provide the user with an easy to use intuitive mechanism for navigating through the data to alternate locations. In this manner the user has the ability to efficiently define the rail maintenance program for their territory.

RailGraph is a 16-bit native Windows™ application that can be run from Windows 3.1 or higher or OS/2. The system makes use of the Microsoft Access relational database which provides a useful and powerful basis for the large amounts of data required for such a system.