From: nilknocgeo@earthlink.net

 wrote in message
news:96401979422132738.170602dpeltier-my-deja.com@news.aioe.org...
> 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
>>
>> 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.
>
> I have a hard time believing that is correct. The equipment on a track
> geometry car is expensive, so you want to maximize its utilization. On the
> other hand, it requires several technicians to operate, so you don't want
> to test the same piece of track over and over again several times a day.
>
> As I said, "autonomous" systems like the ones mentioned in the press
> release are probably not using lasers to measure track gauge, profile, and
> cross-level. The ones used on freight locomotives are just a set of
> accelerometers and a GPS, hooked up to a simple signal processor to look
> for unusually high accelerations, hooked up to a cell phone to report such
> events. Certain types of accelerations are somewhat predictive of rail or
> track problems generally, but a follow-up visual inspection is required
> before you know what, if anything, is the issue.
>
> On the other hand, one thing that the FRA HAS experimented with is putting
> one of their geometry cars on the tail end of revenue passenger trains,
> instead of running it as a separate train. This is cheaper, gives a higher
> utilization, and avoids the operational problems of finding locomotives,
> crews, and an open slot for another high-priority train running at
> passenger speeds. The disadvantage is that you only go where the passenger
> train goes - you don't get to decide (or even know ahead of time) which
> tracks will be tested, you can't stop and field-verify an unexpectedly
> severe defect, etc.
>
> There is also a liability and / or regulatory issue with operating this
> way. The FRA normally requires any federal track defect to be protected as
> soon as it is discovered (usually with a slow order). When a geo car runs
> as a separate train during daylight hours with plenty of advance warning,
> the necessary maintenance personnel can be made available both in the car
> and on the ground to ensure that happens. On long-distance Amtrak routes,
> where the car may come through at night and doesn't necessarily stop at
> the
> edge of each maintenance supervisor's territory, that's harder to
> accomplish. In my experience, the FRA will give some waivers to help
> alleviate this problem (e.g. 24 hours to inspect and protect), but there
> is
> still a big liability concern if a geo car has reported a problem and you
> haven't done anything to protect it.
>
> Dan

Is the geo car ever put on the end of these 100+car oil trains?  If not, why
not?  It seems that the danger from oil derailments is far higher in terms
of human life than Amtrak.

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