Plasser American Corporation’s Automated Tie Locating and Analyzing System (ATLAS) is a tie maping system to automatically detect, in real time, the location of ties along the railroad track. Installed on a Plasser tamping machine, the system allows a fully automatic operation of the tamping machine on track, even if the tie spacing is irregular. The system further allows individual spacing of multiple tamping heads installed on the same tamper.

The ATLAS is installed on the front end of the tamping machine, up to 30 feet (10m) ahead of the tamping units. During tamping operation the ATLAS is used to automatically detect the distance from a known reference point along the track to each individual tie. After plausibility calculations, which determine if the detected ties are in an expected location, both tie locations, together with tie certainty information (both tie ends detected, only left tie end detected, only right tie end detected, inserted tie because expected at this location, slewed tie) are sent to the control logic circuitry for the tamping cycle operation. From this information the tamping cycle control logic calculates the distance between the ties, which is then used to position the individual tamping heads centered above each tie.

Once the correct tamping head location is attained, the tamping cycle is automatically initiated. If more than one tamping head is used on the tamping machine, the tie location information is used to individually adjust the distance between the tamping heads allowing automatic operation of the tamping machine, even on very unevenly spaced tie track (wood tie track).

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