When importing rail profile data, Rangecam automatically determines the rail type (weight) from the list of rail types selected. Because of many factors including similarity of rail types, imperfect rail production, and measurement inaccuracy, the identification is not always correct. After the data is imported, errors in rail section identification may be corrected manually either from charts or the Profile View window, or automatically with the help of reference runs. This topic describes automatic rail section identification using reference runs.
Reference runs covering the territory and track of the run to be corrected must be selected as a prerequisite to this process.
Automatic rail section identification can be performed either from the Calculate Profile Measurements function or the Calculate All batch function. In the former, choose "<from reference run>" in the Rail drop-down list. In the latter, click the Options button beside Wear Measurements and select "From Reference Run".
For any given rail profile in the selected run, the process finds the rail type of the closest profiles in the reference run on the same side of the track, above and below the location of the target profile. The rail type of the target profile is selected according to these rules:
If the closest reference run profiles above and below the location of the target profile have the same rail type, that type is used.
If the closest reference run profiles above and below the location of the target profile have different types, the type of the closest reference profile is used.
If the rail type of one of the closest reference run profiles is known and the other is unknown, the known type is used.
If the rail type of both closest reference run profiles is unknown, the rail type of the target profile is not changed.
If the rail type of the target profile is unknown, it remains unknown. (Profiles of unknown rail type cannot be successfully aligned to any rail section. Without alignment, wear measurements cannot be calculated.)
If the target profile lies before the first profile or after the last profile of the reference run, on the same side, the rail type of the reference run profile is used if it is "close enough" (within 15 feet or 5 m). If not, the rail type is not changed.
If two or more reference runs overlap, the earliest or latest of them is used according to the user-specified rule.