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• Assessing feasibility of inferring key track condition parameters using micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) accelerometers. • Prototype of onboard data acquisition system designed and installed on a track recording car (TRC) and comparison of accelerometer-based results vs TRC recordings. • Accelerometers on the bogie are the best compromise between proximity to source and insensitivity to impulsive noise. • Two bogie accelerometers with two measurement axes can provide quantitative estimates of vertical alignment and trends in geographical distribution of horizontal alignment. • Frequency analysis of vertical/horizontal alignment formulas to justify choice of filtering parameters. The main objective of this paper is to assess the estimation of track condition parameters using onboard micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) accelerometers. A prototype of an onboard data acquisition system was designed and installed on a track recording car (TRC) and a measurement campaign was conducted on an extensive portion of the Brisbane Suburban railway network. Comparison of the accelerometer-based results vs TRC recordings have shown that accelerometers installed on the bogie are the best compromise between proximity to the source and insensitivity to impulsive noise. It was found that two vertical bogie accelerometers (left and right) provide a good quantitative estimate of vertical alignment and that strong correlations with TRC measurements exist for lateral MEMS accelerometer measurements (horizontal alignment). These findings suggest that two bogie MEMS accelerometers with vertical and lateral measurement axes are effective in estimating geographical distributions of vertical/horizontal alignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]