Małgorzata Kuźnar

The sliding strip of the current collector (pantograph) of a rail vehicle is an element directly cooperating with the catenary and is exposed to abrasion, electric discharge and various types of damage. It is therefore the most frequently replaced element. However, often sliding strips are exchanged before exceeding the limit thickness value, which increases the costs related to technical maintenance. Because the wear process is dependent on many factors, heuristic methods are necessary to predict the thickness of the sliding strip. Knowing the predicted thickness value, it will be possible to adapt the maintenance cycle. In the article, the results of simulations carried out based on the developed structure of the artificial neural network are also presented.

The paper focuses attention on the problem of increased risks during the loading and unloading of railway tankers. To evaluate the risk which may occur during loading dangerous goods into tanker trains, the loading processes have been divided into seven stages. Based on HIRA risk analysis, for each stage of improvements, Quick Kaizen tasks were proposed. Special attention was paid to possible improvements in technical means, tools and processes. Thanks to the proposed improvements, it is possible to increase safety, not only during the loading of dangerous goods, but also in cases of loading and transportation of standard cargoes.

In the article, the impact of monitoring systems on the possibility of lowering costs and improving the flow of information in the transport chain has been analysed. For the analysed transport chain, tree variants have been taken into consideration: variant I – without using systems for monitoring location, variant II – container transportation with using systems for monitoring location, variant III – container transportation with using location monitoring and cargo parameters. The conducted tests made it possible to confirm the benefits of implementing this type of system, especially for high-value goods. In the article, a simulation for 50,000 cases of container transportation was done. The simulation and cost analysis has shown that it is possible to reduce the cost of risk significantly.