FRA Issues Final Revised Track Standards Rules

The Federal Railroad Administration has published its final rule to revise regulations governing minimum safety requirements for railroad track.

Under the new rules, railroads will be allowed to inspect rail using continuous rail testing and to use flange-bearing frogs in crossing diamonds.

The new rules also relaxed guard check gauge limits on heavy-point frogs used in Class 5 track and removed an inspection-method exception for high-density commuter lines.

The FRA contends that the rule changes will benefit track owners, railroads, and the public by reducing unnecessary costs and incentivizing innovation, while improving rail safety.

The rule changes stemmed from the creation in 2015 of a Track Safety Standards Working Group of the Railroad Safety Advisory Committee.

FRA published in the Federal Register in December 2019 a notice of proposed rulemaking pertaining to track safety standards.

Loose Bolt in Marion

Earlier this year I was in Marion when I noticed a loose bolt in one of the diamonds at the intersection of the Sandusky District of Norfolk Southern with the Mt. Victory Subdivision of CSX.

The top photo shows the loose bolt. The second image shows an eastbound CSX auto rack train passing over the diamonds and making enough vibration to rattle the bolt out of its position.

Later that afternoon, an NS maintenance of way crews stopped by to put in a new bolt and do other repairs to the diamond (third image)

The bottom image shows the new bolt in place and the old bolt discarded along the tracks.

Steel Wheels on Steel Rails

You don’t see many photographs like this one either online or in railroad club programs. And yet its shows the basics of what makes a railroad a railroad.

It is steel wheels on steel rails. Without it, you don’t have a railway operation.

The wheels belong to a well car in a westbound CSX train at Greenwich, Ohio.

I’m wondering, though, what that tag hanging down says.

Photograph by Craig Sanders