CSX property manager?

We (Clarkson University) have some water quality monitors that we want to put along the Hudson, and huge swathes of the Hudson River west shore riverbank are CSX property. It would be really great if we could talk to one entity (CSX) and get permission to place these monitors into the river at multiple locations. The on-shore component is a small solar panel and 10" square box with battery and electronics. We can place them from the river side, and not need to cross the gauge at any time.

We could obviously attempt to come in the front door, and just cold-call CSX's main office, but it's always so much easier to go in the side entrance. Anybody know how I might contact the CSX property management office?

Have you tried to work through the CSX general manager located at Selkirk?

I would start here:

http://www.csx.com/?fuseaction=about.property_corridor

Railroads are sometimes reluctant to get involved in environmental monitoring situations - if you don't start at the right place (or don't know someone really high up in the company) you will only waste a lot of time being bounced around from person to person until you land at the right place.

Thanks, that looks like the right place to start. We're just measuring CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth), which is largely influenced by groundwater and runoff ... not anything to do with anything the railroad does.

Good luck - let me know how you make out!

'Nother question: does the same power go up and down the West Shore on a daily basis? Or do they swap them around? Here's what I'm thinking: ATMEL sells a short-range radio for $17 quantity 200. If I could make 100 sensors for under $200, that's only $20K. But the problem is that they can't communicate very far. But the trains go past them hourly. If there's a small set of engines that go up and down the West Shore every day, then we could put a data collection module on enough of them to be able to pull the data with a few hours of its being gathered.

It would cost CSX nothing except for some cooperation, and would make a great headline. Much better than the usual "CSX Derailment" headline that's seen too often in New York State. "CSX helps monitor water quality" has that nice green sound to it.

You NEED to talk to CSX. Through freight power is pooled and not specifically assigned in advance. Your best shot for an
assigned engine on the River Subdivision would be one of the local freights probably out of Kingston.
Noel Weaver

Even if it is the same motive power on a regular basis, you're getting into deep water. The problem you will run into is that it would need the cooperation of more than one railroad department (Mechanical, for instance, which doesn't deal with the general public very much), and the people who would normally handle requests to access railroad property for monitoring purposes probably won't know what to do with a request to mount a data collection module on a locomotive. Make sure you have a simpler back up plan if that doesn't go anywhere.

Hmmm.... Yeah, the politics of it might not work at all. Probably one of those things that could only happen if it were a CSX employee pushing it through. Hmmmm..... I wonder if any Clarkson University alumni work at CSX?

RussNelson wrote:Hmmm.... Yeah, the politics of it might not work at all. Probably one of those things that could only happen if it were a CSX employee pushing it through. Hmmmm..... I wonder if any Clarkson University alumni work at CSX?

Once you establish a relationship with CSx you might want to consider putting your reciever on the local track patrol truck. It goes over the track at least once a week, and maybe twice depending on the inspection frequency. It will most likely be the same truck time after time.

DAW

I don't mean to be discouraging, by the way, but I've been involved in a lot of railroad public project work the last couple of years and seen a lot of well-intentioned ideas go nowhere. Not because the railroad doesn't want to help, but just that their primary job is to safely operate trains and they aren't set up to accommodate much else. It never hurts to ask - if you get the right person you may go somewhere.

No, I totally understand .. it's just that railroads and rivers go hand-in-hand, as does the need for local and timely information about the river. Maybe the key to making it work is to do something in line with the (as you say) railroad's need to run safely. They're starting to look at monitoring highway bridge movement under load using a network of sensors. I wonder if anybody is looking at railroad bridges to get similar information? Maybe I need to subscribe to Railway Engineering Journal?