Freight wagon

With geofencing, the system automatically detects when a freight wagon enters or leaves a defined area. At Rail Cargo Austria, A1 Digital's telematics records when a wagon leaves a station or crosses a national border. The zones can be defined freely. Together with GPS coordinates, travel speed and starting speed, this gives dispatchers an overview of all active freight traffic.

Tracking gives dispatchers live data on the position and condition of every wagon and thus the basis for reliable planning. Customers expect deliveries in line with demand and, ideally, continuous location of their goods. Rail Cargo Austria transports almost 100 million tonnes of goods through 18 countries each year and can dispatch wagons more effectively with the data from its SmartCargo project. At Rhätische Bahn, the solution makes freight planning more efficient.

A freight train can go digital without a power supply if the trackers and edge systems on its wagons are self-powered. A1 Digital extends battery life by transmitting smaller amounts of data and adapting the data streams. In podcast episode #210, Tobias Maier and Mirko Spitalny describe an edge system with solar cells and batteries for the digital freight train with Knorr-Bremse. A modular toolkit there also includes modules for energy harvesting.

IoT enables usage-based, predictive maintenance because the movement and loads of every wagon are recorded continuously. Rail Cargo Austria uses the data from its SmartCargo devices for this, with the 3D acceleration sensor detecting shocks. At Rhätische Bahn, limit values for temperature or impermissible shock loads trigger an alarm. According to A1 Digital, the reliable data makes it possible to reduce maintenance and servicing costs.