Patent ID: 8412393

Claim:
A monitoring system, comprising: an inspection system mountable on a vehicle that is configured to travel over an expanse of rail track, the rail track having a plurality of track blocks, and the inspection system configured to acquire track data for at least some track blocks along the expanse of rail track; a positioning system mountable on the vehicle and configured to determine a location of the vehicle on the expanse of rail track and generate location data indicative of the track block associated with that vehicle location; a communications device connected to the inspection system and to the positioning system to transmit the track data and the location data to a remote location; and a centralized computing system positioned at the remote location to receive the transmitted track data and location data, the centralized computing system programmed to: determine a current probability of a track condition for a track block based on the track data; and combine the current track condition probability for the track block with a previously determined cumulative track condition probability for the track block to provide an updated track condition probability for the track block.