Railway Track & Structures - September 2007 - (Page 33) are you telling them about your m/w machinery needs? Do you find suppliers responsive to your requests? “We are continually talking to our suppliers about our needs for equipment types, ease of operation and total cost of operation,” Upward of BNSF noted. “I believe that they listen to us. However, it appears that there is very limited R&D work going on in the roadway equipment industry.” “Our focus in discussions with suppliers has been on our bottleneck machinery,” CPR’s Graham stated. “We need to focus on those pieces of equipment on which we can improve better shape, we can run our trains more consistently, which gives us more business opportunity and, subsequently, less track time. Over the past few years, what has been the production bottleneck has shifted with better, more-productive and more-reliable machines. As such, we are starting to standardize on the type and manufacture of machines in our production gangs, which is allowing us to be more productive. We are now making assessments of the ‘standard team’ to see which machine is now contributing to the production bottleneck.” “Headaches include track time to perform program maintenance and material distribution,” Drake of NS commented. “As to machine needs, we need increased production and reliability of all equipment to allow for effective utilization of available track time. Some machines I’d like to see are: Tie insertion machines capable of holding tie plates in place during tie extraction/insertion. A self-contained rail change-out machine capable of carrying replacement rails, needed tools, Thermite welds, etc. Improved material distribution equipment capable of self-propulsion (no work train) and containing enough materials to meet a production gang’s daily requirements.” “Track time is the biggest issue,” Domski of UP said. “With the volume of trains and customer commitments, time for production and maintenance work is at a premium. There is no silver bullet for this one. A commitment for track maintenance is required by the operating group, which requires extensive planning and execution, then the pressure is on to produce by the engineering forces. Any machinery or methodology that can help us be more productive in the multitude of scenarios will be considered.” More or less standardization When you meet with suppliers, what www.rtands.com Railway Track & Structures September 2007 33 8. http://www.rtands.com
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