Railway vehicle motion detector

A railway vehicle motion detector that monitors vibrations within the vehicle and the acceleration thereof to provide an indication of the condition of motion of the vehicle. The motion detector is adapted to be mounted on any railway vehicle, and in particular on the last vehicle of a railway train, and to be incorporated into a system that monitors and remotely displays a plurality of train status conditions. The motion detector includes a transducer (10) that converts the vehicle vibrations and acceleration into an electrical output signal. A velocity circuit (12) selectively passes and integrates a range of frequencies of the transducer output signal that are reliable indicators of vehicle motion to obtain a velocity signal having a magnitude that is proportional to a change in the velocity of the vehicle and a polarity that is indicative of the direction of a change in velocity. The transducer output signal is also processed by a vibration circuit (14) to derive a vibration signal that is proportional to the magnitude of vibrations within the vehicle. When integrated into a remote monitoring and display system, a programmed microcomputer (17) repetitively monitors the velocity signal and the vibration signal to determine the condition of motion of the vehicle. This information is then made available for inclusion in a report that is transmitted to a remote display unit and presented for use by an operator.