Railway Track & Structures - August 2008 - (Page 6)

I N D U S T R Y T O D AY tial operational complexities.” SEA invites public comment on all aspects of the Draft EIS. Comments must be postmarked by September 30, 2008. The Draft EIS was issued Friday, July 25, 2007, in STB Finance Docket No. 35087. It is available for viewing and downloading via the Board's Website at http://www.stb.dot.gov, under ELibrary, then under Decisions & Notices, beneath the date 7/25/08. FRA issues proposed rule to protect roadway workers The Federal Railroad Administration has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to improve protection for roadway workers from train or equipment movements on an adjacent track. The proposal would require railroads, contractors to railroads and roadway workers to adopt and comply with additional on-track safety procedures. It will cover work groups using certain maintenance equipment when at least one worker is on the ground and the centerline of the adjacent track is 19 feet or less from the centerline of the track being worked on. FRA is also proposing to expand requirements for job safety briefings, training and recordkeeping to ensure compliance with the new procedures. Under existing Roadway Worker Protection rules, work groups engaged in large-scale maintenance or construction must be provided with adjacent-track on(The letter below refers to the rail welding article that appeared in July RT&S.) Good article! I was especially interested in the Applied Ultrasonics section. I believe the idea of AU's procedure for improving the durability of thermite welds is fine. The caution I wish could have been mentioned in your article would have been that ultrasonic energy applied to a metallic surface CAN and DOES improve the hardness and strength of the weld surface and generates a beneficial compressive residual stress to that treated surface layer. The missing fact is that the AU process cannot improve a thermite weld containing internal flaws such as gas bubbles, solidification shrink voids, excess non-metallic inclusions, hot tears, interior tensile residual stresses in the webs, or poor bond to the primary rail ends. I think it is good that the AAR/TTCI is observing some improvement in the durability of their HAL track's welds. A good part of my independent consulting metallurgy work is failure analysis of poor thermite welds. I haven’t seen too many broken welds that initiated failure at weak or inadequate strength surfaces. Accordingly, I hope not too many railroad track welding people reading RT&S conclude that ultrasonic treatment of thermite welds is an across-the-board improvement of all welds. Murphy continuously finds new ways to screw up thermite welds. Jim Hornaday Transportation Metallurgy Consulting Alpha Gamma Transform 6 Railway Track & Structures August 2008 www.rtands.com http://www.rtands.com

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Railway Track & Structures - August 2008 Contents On Track Industry Today Supplier News AREMA News NRC News TTCI R&D Wish List: What Chief Engineers Really Want in M/W Machinery Keeping Ballast in Shape Amtrak Turns to Sophisticated System to Manage NEC Assets Supplier Profiles Products and Literature People Calendar Sales Representatives Website Directory Advertisers Index Professional Directory Classified Advertising Chicago Perspective

Railway Track & Structures - August 2008

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