Euclid1) Make it about saving money.
Yep. Old habits die hard.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
petitnj MTBF coupled to 100 other cars and dragged across the U.S. would cause every train to fail every 40 days. (100,000 divided by 100 cars and 24 hours/day). This means that on a busy main line, a train would fail every day (that is fail to a stop and not just a bad order).
I believe it's about this bad now. It's just accepted as the cost of doing business. Nobody thinks too hard about it...
The whole problem of doing anything different with the braking system on freight cars comes down to the whole issue of power and control.
Where do you get the power to apply the brakes?
How do you control the power?
The genius of the Westinghouse air brake is that it used a single pipe to supply power and control, storing air in each car for power and varying the pressure in the pipe for control.
Pnuematic control systems were not uncommon even a few decades ago, but time has pretty much passed pneumatic control systems by. So, it's probably time to replace it with ECP braking where the air only has to supply the power.
There are big hurdles to overcome, but potentially big advantages once you get there.
The hurdles are:
1. Getting the fleet equipped. Dual equipment is expensive - quite a bit more than doing a straight conversion, but then you have interoperability issues
2. Robust, standard data trainline. Really need one. Don't have one yet. I wonder if a low power, directional radio based system might be better than wires.
3. Hidebound AAR process for setting standards. The railroad folk are good people, but they don't really trust each other, fully. There have been too many instances in the past were one road "got one over" on another.
4. Lack of understanding of all the potential benefits and ancillary benefits. "It's just an airbrake system, right? We already have on of those that works just fine." Actually, no and no.
5. Too many other things to do. Install PTC. Fight or push mergers. Quarrel with Amtrak. Figure out how to move oil trains....
I can't think of a single piece of technology that would do more to improve freight car velocity than EPC braking. I wish the industry was working a bit harder to make it a reality.
Buslist Euclid I think I have called for a “parking brake” for trains. But I am not using the term in reference to handbrakes. I intend it to mean a powered, single control brake system that holds the freight car brakes applied. “Parking brake” is more of a vehicular term, but I think this brake for trains would have the convenience of a vehicle parking brake. So I think the name fits. The engineer just sets or releases the brake from a locomotive cab control. . Call for for it all you'd like. The industry isn't behind it and will not support it at this point. John Punwani at FRA has always been a gadget guy so his work on the next generation train is not unexpected ( but his boss doesn't like it and has threatened to cancel it).
Euclid I think I have called for a “parking brake” for trains. But I am not using the term in reference to handbrakes. I intend it to mean a powered, single control brake system that holds the freight car brakes applied. “Parking brake” is more of a vehicular term, but I think this brake for trains would have the convenience of a vehicle parking brake. So I think the name fits. The engineer just sets or releases the brake from a locomotive cab control.
I think I have called for a “parking brake” for trains. But I am not using the term in reference to handbrakes. I intend it to mean a powered, single control brake system that holds the freight car brakes applied.
“Parking brake” is more of a vehicular term, but I think this brake for trains would have the convenience of a vehicle parking brake. So I think the name fits. The engineer just sets or releases the brake from a locomotive cab control.
.
Call for for it all you'd like. The industry isn't behind it and will not support it at this point. John Punwani at FRA has always been a gadget guy so his work on the next generation train is not unexpected ( but his boss doesn't like it and has threatened to cancel it).
1) Make it about saving money.
2) Make it about public safety and convince the regulators, so they will force the railroads to buy it.
Paul_D_North_Jr Yep. And wow ! Now I know of a grand total of 3 people who have a copy of said book (and of those 3, I gave the book to the other one . . . ). - Paul North.
Yep. And wow ! Now I know of a grand total of 3 people who have a copy of said book (and of those 3, I gave the book to the other one . . . ).
- Paul North.
Apologies for the delayed reply, but was I one of the "three"? I just checked to make sure my copy was still around.
- Erik
P.S. Decided to do a quick look through the book for the first time in 8 1/2 years, interesting to see Kneiling's point to think "logistics" not "transportation".
Trains already have a powered single control brake - the air brake system that is effective on all cars in the train.
The second manually operated braking system must be manually applied to ensure it's effectiveness on each vehicle it is applied to. 'Automatic' systems must still be tested on each car to ensure it's effectiveness.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Traditionally, handbrakes are used for every type of car securement that needs to be independent air, including whole train securement when standing on grades. The Parking Brake would replace handbrakes as a means for whole train securement.
Handbrakes would be retained for securing individual cars or small cuts where needed. I would still call them handbrakes. But the single control “Parking Brake” would be a powered system that would set all the car brakes in the train without relying on air pressure that could leak off.
Semper Vaporo Deggesty Buslist Ulrich No bottled air required. All you need to do is to charge the system. with air. The air pressure holds each spring in a compressed state so long as there is sufficient air in the system. so if I'm a small local elevator where the local dropped off several cars yesterday, the air has leaked off and this "parking brake" has been set. My track mobile now needs to pump up the air to get a car to move? More and time and effort on my part as a customer? What's in it for me? Parking brake? Is this the handbrake that is set by hand and released by hand? Actually, he doesn't understand how brakes work on a RR car. Once you bleed off all the air, the brakes are totally released unless the hand brake is applied (Parking brake?)... to move the car you just release the hand brake then the brakes are then gone. To park it again you have to apply the hand brake again. if you are going to put the car into a train, out on the main line, then you do need a pump to add air so that the whole Train brake can operate, but you won't be moving a train of cars on the mainline with a "Track mobile".
Deggesty Buslist Ulrich No bottled air required. All you need to do is to charge the system. with air. The air pressure holds each spring in a compressed state so long as there is sufficient air in the system. so if I'm a small local elevator where the local dropped off several cars yesterday, the air has leaked off and this "parking brake" has been set. My track mobile now needs to pump up the air to get a car to move? More and time and effort on my part as a customer? What's in it for me? Parking brake? Is this the handbrake that is set by hand and released by hand?
Buslist Ulrich No bottled air required. All you need to do is to charge the system. with air. The air pressure holds each spring in a compressed state so long as there is sufficient air in the system. so if I'm a small local elevator where the local dropped off several cars yesterday, the air has leaked off and this "parking brake" has been set. My track mobile now needs to pump up the air to get a car to move? More and time and effort on my part as a customer? What's in it for me?
Ulrich No bottled air required. All you need to do is to charge the system. with air. The air pressure holds each spring in a compressed state so long as there is sufficient air in the system.
No bottled air required. All you need to do is to charge the system. with air. The air pressure holds each spring in a compressed state so long as there is sufficient air in the system.
so if I'm a small local elevator where the local dropped off several cars yesterday, the air has leaked off and this "parking brake" has been set. My track mobile now needs to pump up the air to get a car to move? More and time and effort on my part as a customer? What's in it for me?
Parking brake? Is this the handbrake that is set by hand and released by hand?
Actually, he doesn't understand how brakes work on a RR car. Once you bleed off all the air, the brakes are totally released unless the hand brake is applied (Parking brake?)... to move the car you just release the hand brake then the brakes are then gone. To park it again you have to apply the hand brake again. if you are going to put the car into a train, out on the main line, then you do need a pump to add air so that the whole Train brake can operate, but you won't be moving a train of cars on the mainline with a "Track mobile".
To me, a "parking brake" is what is used when you are parking your car, and are not certain that the engine and drive train will be able to hold it in place.
Johnny
Read the beginning of the thread! It's about a spring actuated air released parking brake.
Any device used on the railroad has to have incredibly high reliability to survive. Because rail systems are so simple, any failure is normally enough to stop the whole train (a brake pipe ruptures, a triple valve fails in emergency, ...) So reliability is compounded by the hundreds of devices that could fail. Even with mean times between failures of millions of hours on each component, combining them in one train divides the failure rate by the number of components. And, as mentioned, the harsh environment of railroad equipment will ensure that otherwise reliable devices are stressed to their most probable failure point.
Devices you and I use on a daily basis (cars, computers, phones, ...) have Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of 100,000 hours at best. That will not do for a rail car. A rail car with 100,000 hour MTBF coupled to 100 other cars and dragged across the U.S. would cause every train to fail every 40 days. (100,000 divided by 100 cars and 24 hours/day). This means that on a busy main line, a train would fail every day (that is fail to a stop and not just a bad order).
This is what makes railroading so difficult! This also gives on an appreciation for just how reliable a complex system must be to even work at all!
erikemhowever the operative phrase is that they need to be designed and tested to do so.
Repeatedly
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
Sorry for coming so late on this discussion, but after reviewing this thread in the last couple of days there are some basic practical facts that are being missed.
First it is almost impossible for an innovation to be introduced into the industry unless it is backward compatable, and if not there must be a clear migration path to the new technology. Remember there are 1.5 million plus or minus freight cars out there. The lack of implementation of ECP is a victim of this fact. It's difficult to make ECP backward compatable and the several attempts to do so have been less than successful. The only real solution is to create two different fleets of equipped cars (ain't going to happen) or equip cars with dual systems until the change over is complete. Any guesses why after 15 years of final specs it's still under study? (PS DP did a lot to kill it's benefit)
Another thing being missed is that any rule change on the part of the AAR Interchange Standards requires a very rigorous cost benefit analysis. The it's more modern argument won't cut it, there must be actual and demonstrable cost savings to justify the rule change.
Finally there are the Private Car Owners (PCO)s that fight almost any change to their fleet. Remember 70%+ of cars are owned by entities other than the railroads. Requiring them to change to a new braking system would, to make an understatement, create a major revolt. Witness the almost open warfare between the PCOs and the AAR over the use of wayside detectors to require component replacemen. I can only imagine their pushback on a new parking brake proposition.
Overtime.
Instead of going to an incompatible coupler use the present couplers. > On these cars provide a connection either above or below the coupler that wold be opened when a new type connection is encountered. I have seen this system on some transit cars now. A decision to either place the connector above or below would be necessary probably below like present transit types. One item would be protection from debries a. another would be to locate cut levers to opposite the connector. air hoses would still need to be provided for conection to standard coupler only cars and possibility of train separations ?.
Paul_D_North_Jr Almost 50 years ago in the pages of Trains - and his book, Integral Train Systems - John Kneiling recommended a braking system similar to what we now know as Electronically Controlled Pneumatic ("ECP") brakes, with a dual air line - including one that allowed parking the train on the "high air" pressure line - and sophisticated 'train-lined' monitoring and control systems, etc. And, many times John wrote and argued that yes, the railroads are behind the curve on technological innovation. "You could look it up . . . " - Paul North.
Almost 50 years ago in the pages of Trains - and his book, Integral Train Systems - John Kneiling recommended a braking system similar to what we now know as Electronically Controlled Pneumatic ("ECP") brakes, with a dual air line - including one that allowed parking the train on the "high air" pressure line - and sophisticated 'train-lined' monitoring and control systems, etc.
And, many times John wrote and argued that yes, the railroads are behind the curve on technological innovation. "You could look it up . . . "
I have the book and have read it..interestingly one of Kneiling's suggestions was adapting transit type couplers just as the Lion has been advocating, although in his concept blocks of self-propelled cars would use drawbar connections with couplers only at the control cabs at either end oif each sub unit.
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
Ulrich asked, are railroads behind the curve on technological innovation? And I will answer yes and no.
It seems our old friend "Operating Ratio" is rearing its' ugly head again. It seems to boil down to two sides of an equation; does the new tech increase throughput(increase revenue), or cause a decrease in expenses, or at least have them stay the same.
Or, does it increase expenses, or decrease throughput due to some new regulation that hampers operation. I think railroads have always embraced the former, and only do the latter under protest.
I can think of two examples where the CPR embraced new technology because of the former. The first being Distributed Power. It was the single biggest improvement to freight hauling capability over the Rocky Mountains ever invented. It became so important to CP's operation, that as I understand it, at one point for about a year in the late '70's they were the only RR in North America using it. Others used it first, but at one point or another all of them had to suspend using it due to operational or reliability problems. But CP had no choice, they had contracts to fulfill and DP was the only way to do it. And now it is mainstream technology.
The second is Canadian, Wide, or Whisper Cabs. In the mid-eighties CP was about one contract away from having a serious engine crew problem. As the old heads who had come up under steam began to retire, younger men were no longer prepared to work under the same conditions their elders did. And in Canadian winters, conventional cab diesels had a serious problem. At -20 or -30° with a quartering head wind, that flat metal plate under the windshield ahead of the engineer transmitted cold into the cab like a restaurant grill transmits heat into hamburgers. CN did a wide cab first, but CP immediately realized if they didn't do something similar(SD40-2F) that their wage expense graph line was going to assume a vertical trajectory.
Under the right conditions RR's will embrace new technology.
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
Ulrich Well, that's your opinion! It would be rather strange if there were no public discussion after an accident like this...no? And discussions almost always involve opinions. Railroads don't operate in a vacuum...they run through towns and the folks in those towns are voters who have a right and a responsibility to voice their concerns. That's how its supposed to work.
Well, that's your opinion! It would be rather strange if there were no public discussion after an accident like this...no? And discussions almost always involve opinions. Railroads don't operate in a vacuum...they run through towns and the folks in those towns are voters who have a right and a responsibility to voice their concerns. That's how its supposed to work.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Who are you responding to?
I recall the writing of Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline. So few people default to, or are trained in, systems-thinking, and the worst of the bunch are the members of the public who are angry and outraged crtics of the system when the system's weaknesses are revealed.
Beware of the quick fix that backfires was one of Senge's archetypes in problem resolution and systems analysis if I recall correctly.
Crandell
Regardless of how 'High Tech' and automatic and simple and easy to operate a system is implemented - there is one step that still falls to the operator - testing that the system did what it was intended to do.
No matter the man devised and built technological system - it will FAIL, a part will break, a uncharted decision path will be followed, a untested decision path will produce the wrong outcome.
The final step in all automated technologies is testing and observation to ensure that things are proceeding as they should. We have had the WMATA collisions because the automated features of their system were relied upon until manual override was implemented too late to avoid the collision.
In transportation employees are paid a good wage to DO THEIR JOB. Until the Canadian investigative bodies publish their final reports, it would appear that MM&A had a employee that 'short cut' his responsibilities in testing that his train was IN FACT secured, with his short cut (and it's reliance on 'automatic' technologies as they exist in current air brake technology) costing many lives and significant amounts of money. There is no technology that is fully FOOLPROOF, technology may raise the level of the fool required - but that high level fool will surface and defeat the technology.
BucyrusThe incident in Quebec has started its own runaway train of public opinion.
You couldn't put it any better than that, Bucyrus. When public opinion and engineering become intertwined strange things have been known to happen. This will certainly be one of those cases. It isn't just about railroads; it is about our society and the politics of technological innovation.
John
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