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| Re: Could the Sperry Car detect this broken rail? (1223741) | |||
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Re: Could the Sperry Car detect this broken rail? |
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Posted by Jersey Mike on Mon May 20 16:41:02 2013, in response to Could the Sperry Car detect this broken rail?, posted by seabeachexpress on Mon May 20 12:36:59 2013. Initial indications point to the failure at a rail joint. Rail joints cannot be inspected via normal ultrasonic methods.Read here for more on this accident. If the link doesn't work cut and paste it. http://has-been.dyndns.org:8080/wp2/index.php/?p=7351 Here's his proposed solution. We can surmise that in junk yard behind the NTSB’s Materials Lab at Ashburn VA there is a big pile of old joint bars. Dozens of memorable derailments have been attributed to broken joint bars. Vehicle-borne induction and ultrasonic rail flaw detection techniques cannot detect cracks in joint bars. Ditto for track circuits. Like PTC, the rail [support] industry claims that it is developing a technological solution, in this case video image analysis for detection of fractures in joint bars without the necessity of slow, laborsome on-the-ground visual inspection. Effective visual inspection is problematic in winter weather. FRA rules 49 CFR 213.233 (track inspections) and .351 (rail joints) are wishy-washy. One NTSB report concludes “At the time of accident, [the track inspector] was responsible for inspecting and maintaining 928 rail joints [weekly].” (That’s 23.2 joints per hour based on a 40-hour week.) The fix? Hire some young, eager, expendable summer interns to do a joint bar inspection blitz. Another solution: offer employees a $25000 bounty for each cracked joint bar they discover. Fractured joint bars aren’t common, nor can they be easily faked or doctored. The prospect of earning an additional years’ pay after finding 3-4 defective joint bars means that everybody, particularly signal maintainers, will be on their knees looking closely at every rail joint everyday. The unpleasant duty of roll-by inspections on cold, rainy nights now becomes a treasure hunt. For large Class 1’s, paying-off on 100 bad joint bars per year at $25K each is peanuts compared to the cost of a partially (or questionably) effective defect detection technology. |
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