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Safetee wrote:Well, if nothing else those coupler pins look cheap enough where you could replace them all pretty inexpensively as opposed to waiting for the next one to break.
mtuandrew wrote:Safetee wrote:Well, if nothing else those coupler pins look cheap enough where you could replace them all pretty inexpensively as opposed to waiting for the next one to break.
Yeah, it’s a big hunk of steel, though it might be a specific alloy and certainly has a specific treatment method after manufacture (milling, heat treatment/stress relief.) From what I know about metallurgy, high-stress parts like this ought to be visually inspected on the regular, with dye penetration and Magnaflux tests at specified periods or whenever there is a high-stress incident like a collision or hard pull.
In the end, the pin did what it was designed to do: fail (if it did fail, rather than just falling out or something) so the drawbars, coupler pockets and frames don’t. This is a major maintenance issue though, and the HST Barns ought to be on notice.
dt_rt40 wrote:I remember an NEC signal failure in summer 2015. From what I could observe being in a MARC train for over an hour, it seemed like all trains on that portion south of Baltimore were held to a very low speed limit, like 25mph. Why isn't what's good for the goose, good for the gander? Wouldn't a blanket policy of "if automatic signals are down - especially on a host railroad - assume the worst and that any switch could be mislined or any train in an unexpected place" be the best policy?
dt_rt40 wrote:Hope this isn't too OT
I remember an NEC signal failure in summer 2015. From what I could observe being in a MARC train for over an hour, it seemed like all trains on that portion south of Baltimore were held to a very low speed limit, like 25mph. Why isn't what's good for the goose, good for the gander? Wouldn't a blanket policy of "if automatic signals are down - especially on a host railroad - assume the worst and that any switch could be mislined or any train in an unexpected place" be the best policy?
BlendedBreak wrote:It may be time for the major railroads to collectively create a single operating rules book to rule them all.
For starters;
Establish a non-punative safety culture.
Increase scenario based training.
Refresh ALL operations managers.
Require college degrees as a minimum for upper-mid-level management employees.
Centralize training by establishing a quality assurance department.
Do away with seniority based promotion in favor of merit based.
Open lines of communication for employee feedback.
Work with accredited universities to create railroad specific courses.
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