Rail vehicle with sensing of thrown up ballast

摘要

A rail vehicle includes an underbody which is subjected to thrown up ballast when the rail vehicle is operating on a ballasted section of track. In at least one embodiment, the underbody is equipped with at least one acoustic signal pickup which acoustically senses ballast stones striking the underbody; a signal processing device is provided to which a signal is fed from the at least one acoustic signal pickup and which processes the signal in such a way that a thrown up ballast signal is generated which represents the impacting of ballast stones on the underbody; and the thrown up ballast signal from the signal processing device is included in a mode of operation of the rail vehicle.