A solution for monitoring a railway vehicle is provided. A vehicle node and one or more sensor nodes are deployed on the railway vehicle. Each sensor node is configured to acquire data and communicate with the vehicle node only when certain conditions are met. The sensor node(s) and vehicle node can evaluate operating conditions to determine whether an alert should be sent to initiate action. In an illustrative application, the alert can correspond to excessive hunting by a wheelset of the rail vehicle which is posing a danger for derailment.