Applications of expert systems in railroad maintenance: Scheduling rail relays

Railroads replace rail when it exhibits too many defects, wears beyond safe limits, or develops extensive plastic deformation. The complex process of developing a plan for rail relay or replacement is known as a rail scheduling. A knowledge based expert system has been developed to guide the rail scheduling process. A prototype was developed in conjunction with Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) in order to provide more formal, more consistent, and more rational criteria for rail replacement. A productive system was then developed for use in preparing BN’s 1990 rail relay program. The system demonstrates the role of expert systems in supporting decision making in railroad maintenance and identified several areas for other applications of expert systems.