Railcars Keep Rolling with 3C Telemetry System

3C Telemetry LLC, Centennial, Colorado

It can be an expensive pill to swallow if your specialized railcar has been banned from the rails. That is what happened to numerous railcar owners that had three axle Buckeye trucks. 3C Telemetry has the technology to keep the railcars rolling.

The AAR came out with a circular C-9312 in 2001to ban Buckeye triple axle trucks from interchange service starting January 1, 2004 because the center axle is shielded from the wayside hot-box detectors. The railcars would be allowed to continue operation if a bearing monitoring system was installed on the railcar.

3C Telemetry started development of a hot bearing monitoring system in late 2001. The system was tested at TTCI in Pueblo over a period of nine months. 3C Telemetry was granted approval of monitoring system on March 10, 2003. In 2020, 3C Telemetry took over the production, installation, and maintenance of the 3C Telemetry Hot Bearing system. 3C Telemetry upgraded a fleet of 300-ton flatcars for the Department of Defense.

The system works by monitoring the temperature of the center bearings. If the temperature rises above a threshold temperature, it activates an AHB (Artificial Hot Box), which is a hot plate that can be sensed by the wayside detectors. The wayside detectors send a radio message to the train crew that they have a problem and the train is stopped for inspection. The wayside detectors are positioned about every 20 miles along the rail lines.