Monitoring railway vehicles safely

Locomotives and railcars need electrical power. The power for this is produced using a diesel generator on board or fed in to the vehicle from above from an overhead line or power rail. These drives on board the locomotives or railcars are normally unearthed and therefore need to be secured by means of a special insulation monitoring device. Bender insulation monitoring devices come in an RW variant to meet the specific requirements in terms of shock, vibration and temperature-resistance. Earthed power supplies can be protected via residual current monitors and voltage relays.

The carriages in passenger trains, and also refrigerated carriages for freight transport, for example, need separate power supplies which are fed from the locomotive. Using special insulation monitoring devices, Bender can detect faults very early and quickly pinpoint them using insulation fault location devices in accordance with EN 61557-9. This clearly minimises the potential risk for passengers, crew and equipment.