Keywords: freight wagon, weighing, multibody simulation, road-rail vehicle, industrial siding, dynamics, simulation-to-reality transfer, data analytics.

Accurate knowledge of freight wagon mass is essential for safe railway operation and reliable billing in industrial siding logistics. Existing weighing methods typically require dedicated track-scale infrastructure or wagon-mounted sensor systems, which can involve substantial investment or limited applicability. This paper presents an infrastructure-independent weighing concept in which a measurement system installed on a shunting road-rail vehicle estimates wagon mass from the coupling force and vehicle acceleration with linear regression on filtered measurement data. A multi-body simulation model of a road-rail vehicle coupled to an Eanos freight wagon was developed to evaluate the influence of different conditions. Simulation results showed measurement deviations of approximately 4% under operational conditions. Real-world tests demonstrated good repeatability, with 80% of measurements errors by less than 2% or 360kg from the mean measured mass. The results indicate that locomotive-based freight wagon weighing is technically feasible and promising for cost-effective industrial siding applications, although further validation with different freight wagon types and loading conditions is required to improve absolute accuracy.

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