NRS-260 Prime

Full Feature Test Vehicle

The NRS-260 Prime Rail Flaw Detection Vehicle with Freightliner M2 Crew Cab offers a roomy four passenger, high roof front cabin with ample space for supervisors, track inspectors, auditors or other personnel.

Digital signal processing

The NRS-260 Prime features 48-channel digital signal processing, allowing real-time sequential data processing, superior signal-to-noise ratios, and higher testing speeds with fewer false positive test results.
Pattern recognition and defect analysis
Nordco’s NRS-260 Prime Rail Flaw Detection Vehicles are fully automated and digital, incorporating the following key features:

Pattern recognition defect classification - incorporates artificial intelligence to recognize common rail conditions, as well as recognize and classify defects. It is an adaptive learning system that adds new defects to the library as they are analyzed, allowing the system to recognize new defects automatically.

On-board Run-on-Run - a comparative analytical tool that compares prior test results to current test results for the same portion of the rail. The system alerts the operator of a match to a prior indication and allows for real-time comparison and the opportunity to identify any changes in the rail’s health.

XL9-11 Wheel

The NRS vehicles use Nordco’s exclusive XL9-11 wheel probe technology designed specifically to perform ultrasound testing on rail. This 9” rolling search unit includes eleven ultrasonic transducers:

• One zero-degree crystal for both web coverage and base detection
• One 37.5-degree forward-facing crystal and one 37.5-degree rear-facing crystal for full rail web coverage
• Three 70-degree forward-facing crystals (field, center and gage) and three 70-degree rear-facing crystals (field, center and gage) for full head coverage
• One side-looking field crystal and one side-looking gage crystal for longitudinal cross-rail coverage

Sweeper Wheel

The 9” Sweeper wheel probe is optimized to detect transverse detail fractures beneath sub-surface shelling where field or gage surface conditions are inadequate for traditional detection. One zero-degree transducer and four proprietary shear wave angle transducers focus on head inspection in the field and gage corners. This enables the detection of small transverse defects in these compromized surface zones of the rail head.

Tracer Wheel

The 6.5” tracer wheel probe is oriented at a cant angle, optimized to inspect worn gage corners that cannot be sufficiently inspected with perpendicular oriented RSUs due to contact loss. A set of shear wave transducers is aimed at the gage corner to detect defects in the gage volume of the rail head. A zero degree transducer is used to detect compound features of gage defects that are typically caused by WRI mismatches.