Recently, in response to the large number of catenary equipment units and the cumbersome filling out of various records for maintenance, inspection and patrol, the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway Maintenance Management Company of China Railway Electrification Engineering Group has innovated its maintenance methods in practice and introduced an intelligent mobile inspection system for catenary equipment. This system uses NFC wireless communication technology (contactless point-to-point data transmission technology), affixing smart chips to catenary masts so that each mast has an electronic file. Maintenance personnel only need to use a handheld terminal to "communicate" with the chip, and record forms for maintenance, inspection and patrol data are automatically generated, making it convenient for workers to fill them out on site and upload them to the cloud at the same time. This realizes "dialogue" between personnel and poles and greatly improves maintenance efficiency.

    At present, this system is being trialed on the Jinan section of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway and is expected to be rolled out across the entire line before the end of 2013. The application of this system is the first of its kind in railway equipment maintenance in China.