They are both from the 90s. Only one is entertaining.
https://blerfblog.blogspot.com/2023/02/just-stop-it-train-brakes.html?m=0
75% of the North American car fleet is private what incentive will you create for; GATX, Mitsui, CAI, VTG et al. to eat those cost?.
I also don’t know why braking keeps coming up in a derailment that any form of braking clearly would not have prevented…
This is an interesting essay, but I do think it misstates a few things.
First off, it misses the second-biggest reason why ECP brakes went nowhere after they were tested in the 2000’s. The biggest reason, as everyone agrees, is the lack of a workable path towards full adoption. But the second biggest reason is this: economically, there were almost no advantages to the ECP system.
Stopping distances are reduced by half? So what? At best this can make a very marginal difference in track capacity at a few chokepoints. At worst, the faster service breaking is literally never used, because fuel conservation practices already result in a train reducing its speed long before it reaches the minimum stopping distance to the next red signal. (Actually, at worst: engineers start to rely more on air braking and less on dynamics, which increases brake wear. I heard a rumor that was actually an observed phenomenon on ECP test trains.)
Train dynamics are easier to manage? Maybe - the locomotive engineers will have to weigh in on this - but I doubt it? Slack will still be a thing. I don’t think most broken knuckles / pulled drawbars / train-handling derailments have anything to do with brake response time.
Runaway prevention? ECP brakes, with their graduated release feature, might prevent some fraction of runaways. These events are so rare that you’re talking about a fraction of a very small number; economically, it’s not significant.
The only actual payback on the investment came from some FRA regulatory relief. I don’t recall the details. I think FRA gave some incentives for ECP trains under a waiver, mostly by eliminating or reducing the requirements of the 1,000 / 1,500 mile in
When I was still working CSX was instructing Engineers that Dynamic Braking was their primary form of braking and the use of air brakes was a secondary braking tool. I can only believe in the past 7 years that the use of air brakes has been incresingly discouraged. ECP or not, if you aren’t using air in the first place there is absolutely no advantage to ECP.
Except in an emergency application where all the brakes would apply at once instead of serially, eliminating the problems caused by severe slack action. Still probably not economically justifiable.
Literally in the post “The biggest one is no one has been able to provide leadership that leads down the implementation path. Managing through the change from standard to ECP braking is fraught with problems.”
Okay. That’s what they said about PTC…and have now changed their tune.
A workable ECP system gets you a whole host of other things with that data trainline. That’s where the money is… It’s a building block for faster average velocity, longer crew district railroading… Which is needed if the RRs have any real future.
Ah. I see. The money is in the other things.
And those other things are…?
Ed
I was talking about the AAR standard for ECP brakes that was developed in the late 1990’s and implemented on some test trains in the 2000’s. That standard did NOT support a “data bus” linking cars together, and from what I could glean, did not really have any extensibility built in. It is also the ONLY standard for ECP brakes that has been developed for North American freight trains at this time, and if there is a legal requirement to implement ECP brakes within a 5- or 10-year horizon, it will almost certainly be the basis of that effort, for lack of any alternatives.
I agree that the situation is somewhat analogous to PTC, but:
1.) PTC is a long way from paying for itself too. Yeah, it’s nice to deliver track bulletins electronically. It’s not worth billions and billions of dollars. If PTC turns out to be the thing that enabled a reduction in crew size, then it might - MIGHT - earn back it’s cost some day.
2,) The benefits that we’re starting to see from PTC were foreseen way before PTC was implemented. They just didn’t justify the cost. By contrast, the benefits from ECP brakes are much less clear and much less compelling, while the cost of implementation is far larger.
I agree that you could do a lot with a data link between freight cars, b
Mr. Peltier, what Mr. Oltmann is referring to is what’s called ‘powerline modulation’ over the 220V electrical line required for current ECP. “Internet of Things” connections depended very heavily on some form of 120V ‘home’ powerline modulation in the years before pervasive WiFi and 4G/5G/LTE; before systems like Zigbee there was utility in implementing Salutation Protocol over powerline modulation so fhtat office equipment would ‘configure itself’ and interwork merely by being plugged in. Great strides in the technology have been made since the early Nineties!
In my opinion, while the attempt to mandate ECP for key trains was a laudable thing, and reminiscent of the original Esch Act strategy for rolling implementation of ATC for block signaling… the only case the FRA could make was one based on safety. And 3% improvement for over $3T was not enough ‘safety’ to make the trick work; we might as well have tried implementing Euclid’s armored General Products #4 hulls. When actual scientific assessment of the ECP mandate was conducted in 2017, the idea was thrown out… not because of some supposed Trumpster meddling, but simply because the gains didn’t justify either the expense or the risks during implementation.
What might be interesting is a ‘creeping featurization’ implementation of the power/data trainline combined with wireless/RF data fusion for ‘breaks in the trainline’ or contactless modem data transfer to ‘passive’ wiring. If QR and PM hadn’t become mainstream kludges… that might get you a long way toward ECP-like actuation and release from one-pipe brakes with those modules every 10 to 20 cars in a consist.
With the difference in braking force between cars, ECP in emergency might not totally eliminate some severe slack action incidents.
For use dynamics first and then dynamics with air is preferred. However, they’ve relaxed what their definition of power or stretch braking is that allows using air when in higher throttle notches than before. There are still some in management that realize there are times when you need to use air when in power.
Jeff
Did you read the blog post? They’re in there.
I can see that if you don’t have empty/load braking.
This is a good thing! The goal is get the stuff over the road in one piece. RRs are not “fuel savings” companies. Service first!
Yep. It’s why the “state of the art” is obsolete. Also, a 100+, 60’ “extension cords” running 220V plugged in end-to-end is a really terrible idea.
As the industry didn’t move an inch forward on this at that time, anything to light a fire under them would have been a good thing. Pay back? Yeah, I doubt it, but that’s not the point.
Implementation strategy?
Unit trains first. Easiest. Least valuable, but best place to hone the product.
Then intermodal. Relatively few cars - by A LOT. They tend to stay in chunks, so segregating fleet not as hard.
Loose cars…Very hard, but by the time we get the first two done, RRs will be primarily intermodal with botique car load business. Some combo of pass thru data connections on older cars, new cars with dual provision and retrofitting and block segregation and mixed mode trains using DPUs or "MOT"s might be a way forward. Requires quite a bit of operational modeling…
This is a long term project! A couple decades, at least, if they start now.
CN and CP just missed a big opportunity as they and the grain companies purchased thousands of new grain hoppers over the past decade or so to replace the old cylindrical 4-bay ‘Trudeau’ fleet.
Power line modulation goes back a l-o-n-g way. One example appropriate for this forum (well maybe the MR forum) was GE’s Astrac that used a high frequency burst to trigger the firing of an SCR to vary the speed of the locomotive.
There have been a lot of advances in low cost signal processing since the 1990’s, which could make for a more robust modulation/detection scheme than was possible back then. With ECP, the required data rate isn’t all that great, which means that it can use audio or low radio frequencies for the carrier(s) which will help in getting the signal through several thousand feet of cable and 100+ connectors. I think it should be mandatory that the EOT provide proof of connectivity.
If you take PTC, ECP and DPU together you can have these things:
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lighter freight cars with lower buff force requirement
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eliminate time pumping air
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automated brake testing
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faster restricting speed
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greatly reduced PU/SO times (see #2, #3)
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reduced derailment risk - onboard health monitoring.
Which can mean longer crew districts, fewer locomotives in the fleet, fewer freight cars in the fleet, higher value of product.
Toss in route profile smoothing and electrification of heavy mainlines and you can really get things to move.
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. RRs are currently having a nice “going out of business sale”. PSR is really just a way to squeeze the last drops from declining carload franchise. Are there any leaders out there with any vision for this industry?
…and by “really move” I don’t mean higher track speeds. I mean less time stopped and going slow.