SuperVia, a railway company in the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region, has introduced a new overhead line inspection system. The pantograph collision detection system has been in operation since June 2022 at the operator of local passenger rail transport (SPNV) and concessionaire of 270 track km in Rio and eleven other cities. All lines can be inspected in seven days with the new overhead line inspection system, compared to 22 months with manual inspection. The system was introduced after SuperVia recorded ten failures in 2010 and nine in 2021. The failures paralyse the system with the closure of up to two lines, depending on the location. The average cost of each failure is put at €49,000 (BRL250,000). The system was first introduced in Australia and is already in use in New Zealand, Belgium, the Netherlands and the USA. (dks/RF/SCI)
