From: nilknocgeo@earthlink.net

"Jishnu Mukerji"  wrote in message
news:LLSdnY5A5KvcMuXOnZ2dnUVZ_oednZ2d@giganews.com...
> On 5/18/2014 1:39 AM, Glen Labah wrote:
>> 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
>>
>
> ...snip snip for brevity ....
>
>> 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.
>
> The reason that this is an issue at Metro north is because they had some
> serious track inspection failures in the last couple of years and their
> whole track inspection methodology was called into question by the FRA
> as a result.
>
> One of what turned out to be a case of serious omission of adequate
> track inspection upon investigation, led to the derailment of one train
> and an opposing train crashing into it just outside of Bridgeport CT.
>
> There were other incidents with less spectacular results. When FRA ran
> its own inspection they found numerous deficiencies that were apparently
> not detected by MNRR's track inspection program. That is why this extra
> attention to track inspection at Metro north of late.
>
> It was most likely a cultural and training issue, but throwing in a bit
> of technology always seems to go hand in hand with such. Hopefully they
> are actually fixing the root causes while they are at it. It is likely
> that the root cause was not entirely the lack of equipment.
>

So let us wonder what would be the results would have been of Federal
inspection of the track in Lynchburg, VA?

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