To enhance safety of movements of trains, Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) has been focusing on detecting hot axle failures enroute. For that, Hot Box Detectors (HBD) are installed strategically at the end of platform side of stations, where rolling in rolling out examination of trains are done.These sensor based HBD will detect incidences of hot axle in the running trains and alert the railway staff to take preventive measures. Due to continuous movement of wheels of the coaches and wagons, ball bearing sometimes fails, which leads to increase in the temperature of axles. This is known as hot axle.
There are different causes for the incidence of hot axle, which includes overloading, faulty condition of bearings and other causes. During the year 2020-21, 07 cases, 2021-22, 09 cases, 2022-23, 14 cases and 2023-24 a single case of hot axle has been detected on freight trains by the sensor based HBD's.
