The Netherlands – Railway traffic noise

The demo project in The Netherlands is focused on the measurement of noise from rail transport in a key location of the Netherlands. An autonomous rail noise remote sensing device will be installed along a major railway.

Deployment in fixed test site: the autonomous remote sensing devise for railway noise will be installed along a major north-south railway. Sensors will be mounted both on the rail and at close distance to it.

Monitoring campaign: The sound signal from all train types, both freight and passenger, will be recorded by the remote sensing device for noise. With the help of additional sensors along the track, the position of individual wagons will be determined and its sound emission level will be assessed.
With video capturing and/or radio-frequency identification, the identity of the wagons will be determined. This will be checked against data made available by the rail operator (PRORAIL, national railway agency). All data will be stored in a database and from it the criteria for high and low emitters will be derived on the basis of the technical data from the wagon and the statistical distribution of the different levels.

Development of remote sensing rail noise protocol: Analysed data will be used to develop a protocol that can be applied for monitoring the sound emission of wagons on lines where restrictions apply to sound emissions, such as noise differentiated track access charges schemes and total cast iron brake block bans. The protocol will describe the technical specifications of the system, the accuracies of the components and the evaluation criteria for noise emission classifications.