From: gl4317@yahoo.com

In article ,
 "conklin"  wrote:

> You are irrational once again.  If Metro-North needs to follow X, Y and Z
> for safe transport of passengers, then freight RRs which carry oil need to
> have track as good as Metro-North.  Or, are you saying that Metro-North
> needs no new program because you say so?


The mainline railroads already are doing these types of track
inspections - or rather the Federal Railroad Administration does the
inspections with its own cars:

http://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0120

In some cases the railroad companies have their own track inspection
cars to do track inspection work, or they have other methods of doing
this work.  The FRA is only supposed to verify their methods are working.

About two years ago I attended a SoundTransit meeting where the expense
of track inspection came up, and one of the contractors said the
cheapest way of doing the regular track inspection was, rather than have
a special track inspection car, to simply put the required equipment on
some of the cars already operating in regular service.  They said they
were already doing this on a few other commuter railroads.

Therefore, what Metro-North is doing is probably not really required
beyond the regular inspections they are already doing.  Instead, what
has probably happened is that someone pointed out to them that the
regular inspections would be a lot cheaper and somewhat more useful if
it were being done by the cars they already have.

Because of the sheer number of miles on a class 1 railraod, the main
line railroads already have crews and track inspection cars that do
this.  Union Pacific has a few locomotive hauled passenger cars for
this, or the Canadian National has a rebuilt RDC (their 1501) that does
this.

The problem here is that a commuter railroad has cars that pass over the
track a number of times a day, so Metro-North or any other commuter
railroad that inspects their track by having inspection equipment on
their cars is inspecting their track far more often than is required.
It isn't necessarily that they are more safety conscious but simply an
effect of doing this inspection with the cheapest method available to
them (that is, using their own passenger equipment).

For freight railroads, the cheapest thing is going to continue to be
doing the inspections only at the required interval.

--
Please note this e-mail address is a pit of spam due to e-mail address
harvesters on Usenet. Response time to e-mail sent here is slow.

--- SoupGate/W32 v1.03
 * Origin: LiveWire BBS -=*=- UseNet FTN Gateway (1:2320/1)