Developing an Enterprise Asset Management
System for Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor by Willem Ebersohn, Valerie Marcolongo
& Michael Trosino
September 30, 2004
Amtrak operates under one of the most challenging railway
maintenance environments in the world. It shares its high-speed
Northeast Corridor (NEC) right-of-way with six freight
railroads and seven commuter authorities. Between Washington,
D.C. and Boston, Mass., Amtrak provides a high-speed inter-city
rail transport service along the line while substantial portions
of the same track are subjected to heavy haul freight with up
to 35.8-ton (32.4-tonne) axle loads. No other high-speed intercity
railroad in the world allows heavier axle-load freight service
to travel over the same tracks as high-speed service. Adding
to this complexity is the need to assess the impact of operating
additional services and increasing operating speeds requested
by the various service providers.
To optimally manage and control the railway infrastructure in
this environment, Amtrak has developed a centralized Infrastructure
Information Management System, known as IIM. Infrastructure refers
to a group of utilities or assets that fall within a specific
engineering discipline and which is a self contained part of
a service (e.g. track in a rail transport system). The IIM system
relates the performance of the infrastructure to traffic, type
of maintenance input and the cost associated with keeping the
railway available at the appropriate standard. The system is
primarily a decision support tool consisting of an infrastructure
database with applications that manage both the moving and fixed
infrastructure asset groups.
The system was initially developed as a track maintenance management
system that consisted of a relational database and linear Track
Viewer Application. The database included surveyed track infrastructure
assets defined by their physical location, their measured condition
and their respective track work history records. An asset refers
to a maintenance subset of an Infrastructure group. It is used
to provide a specific function and if taken out of service, prevents
operation over that section (e.g. a turnout is subset of track).
The system was designed to allow the linear track chart viewer
application to interact with the relational database. This provided
a display of maintenance management data sets relative to all
the fixed assets to support track maintenance decisions.
DECEMBER 2004 "Designing Amtrak's
Wayside Train/Track Interaction
Detection System" READ
ARTICLE
SEPTEMBER 2004 "Monitoring Vehicle/Track Interaction on Amtrak's
NEC" READ
ARTICLEAUGUST 2004 "Optimizing
Wheel and Rail Profiles on Amtrak's Northeast
Corridor" READ
ARTICLE
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To optimally manage and control the railway infrastructure in
this environment, Amtrak has developed a centralized Infrastructure
Information Management System, known as IIM. Infrastructure refers
to a group of utilities or assets that fall within a specific
engineering discipline and which is a self contained part of
a service (e.g. track in a rail transport system). The IIM system
relates the performance of the infrastructure to traffic, type
of maintenance input and the cost associated with keeping the
railway available at the appropriate standard. The system is
primarily a decision support tool consisting of an infrastructure
database with applications that manage both the moving and fixed
infrastructure asset groups.
