Corrosion just noticed? Just curious how long Amtrak was operating these cars with corrosion issues and wonder who pulled the rug on them? So the message goes out that Amtrak can’t manage itself.
1 Like
Well that’s sure not good,
Rich
I didn’t see in the article – where was the corrosion?
It is easy to figure where the corrasion has begun. Any location where steel and aluminum meet can be bad. Example the corrasion that happen with AL wire connected to steel. Al is a good conductor but al oxide is not a conductor with any low voltages between steel and AL speeding more corrasion.
From what’s been reported they’re trying to not say were. But to jerk those cars out of service so fast means it’s in an extremely safety sensitive area likely the drawbars or truck mounts possibly even carbody structurally related. This was 74 cars removed all at one time almost the entire fleet.
I know from long ago surfing the AAPRCO boards that Beach Grove does not have a very good reputation among Private Railway Car Owners for anything passenger car related. That could have been a one off post but at the same time, I have never seen them work on Private Railway Cars either, so might be true. That aside, you have to wonder with railway inspections being what they are how a corrosion issue could advance to such a stage that the car has to be pulled out of service. Not just one car but a whole fleet. They had to know with salt being used in the Midwest in Winter that corrosion would be an issue somewhere on the cars. Perhaps the railway inspections are not tight enough to catch it. Perhaps it is in an area which is not covered by railway inspections (which might cover why they contacted the manufacturer).
This just has my mind wandering down several tangental scenarios at the same time.
As I recall it took about 30+ years for the owners of Pullman built lightweight cars with the stainless steel cladding below the window line to discover the extent of the galvanic corrosion that made most of the cars rolling scrap.
Here we’re dealing with the worst of all types aluminum mixing with steel. There’s a reason why you don’t see to many of the old international trucks from the 80s rolling around anymore. Some bean counter at the headquarters decided that aluminum could be held together with steel riveting and huck bolts after about 10 to 15 years the cabs literally started to fall apart as the holes that were punched through the panels both aluminum literally broke apart.
Balt: IIRC it took about ten years for Pullman to realize using stainless steel sheathing over low alloy steel was a bad thing. Pullman then bit the bullet and started making all stainless steel cars. The Amfleet cars that I was riding frequently in the 2013-4 time frame were still looking good with respect to corrosion.
Harold: Having worked with aluminum tubing used in antennas, stainless steel will hold up fairly well when in contact with aluminum. Ordinary steel does not. Placing iron and aluminum in anything but the very driest environment is creating a battery and the iron gets the worst of it. Not surprised to hear that the cab frames fell apart in a decade.