Given our recent span of “refreshingly brisk” weather with temps around -12 to -18 ( or colder elsewhere!) how does the cold affect the mechanical and personal components of railroading? I’ve heard that cold makes metal more brittle…but how brittle? What about fuel, switches, couplers, flanges, and certainly not least…the crew?
Brittle metal shoudn’t be a problem. My aircraft spends hours at 43K feet with temps ranging from -55 to -65 C. We don’t worry about the wings snapping off.
I would suspect that some fluids, greases, and oils associated with bearings, knuckles, etc might start to gel but I’d bet that GE/EMD aren’t rookies in this aspect. Jet A(similiar to Diesel) has a freezing point of -40 but I don’t know what diesel’s freeing point is. It is going to be warmer as what makes Jet A different from Jet is the freezing additive to lower it to -40. I believe that MIL-H-5606 and Skydrol hydraulic fluid don’t have any real problems until -25 C. But again, I’m not sure what, if any, hydraulic fluid is unsed in rail.
I’d guess the biggest problem would be listening to the crews complain about how freaking cold it was!
Oh, railroaders worry plenty about brittle metal! Rails take a lot during winter…along with them being more brittle, they’re put under stress because of shrinkage. (Then they kink in summer, what fun!)
The trainline also leaks a lot more during winter, and if it wasn’t for the air dryers, water would condense in there and freeze it up.
As for the personal aspect…you ever tried to walk a mile and a half through 2 feet of snow with uneven ballast underfoot in temperatures that freeze exposed flesh in 2 minutes? Well, neither have I, but that’s not the point!
The cold magnifys all the impacts that take place with steel. Watching a train pass we view it and think of it as smooth fluid movement. We don’t think of the non-codemable flat wheel set that is on a car in the train. We don’t think about the 3 hill & dale areas that the 9000 foot train is traversing and how the slack in the train is adjusting itself between draft forces and buff forces…well each of those things create impacts within the operation of the train…the flat wheels create impacts with the rail…impacts that when coupled with seriously cold temperatures are capable of creating a broken rail where there may be the least pre-existing flaw in the rail. The continually adjusting slack action can generate enough force to shatter one or more knuckles, the slack action can also yank out a drawbar that has the least mechanical flaw.
If it is going to happen…it will happen when it is cold.
You just gotta make sure you have a good blend and a good additive in your Diesel and you son’t have any problems. Up here it gets down quite a ways, (-37F This morning at about 6am) and diesel engines out number gas 2 or 3 to 1. And its not always the fuel itself you have to worry about. It is what else you got, If you happen to get out of the end of the tank, you have a really good chance of getting the water that floats on top. That will freeze up sooner that the fuel will. Saw a generator the other day that that happened to, froze the canister filter solid. Having a balmy day today, I think we finally topped -5F. But anyway, I bet getting a whole locomotive tank to ungel is really a pain to do…
When diesel fuel gets cold enough it starts getting thicker due to a wax like substance which immediately plugs up the fuel filters. Unit is done until filter changed.
Railroads combat this in two ways, one is the additive to combat gelling. The second is fuel preheaters which use cooling water heat to increase fuel temperature in the fuel tank.
As for the main reservoir air, today’s air dryers and such are a great improvement, but they do fail or get frozen themselves. Best course then is to revert to what the steam boys did, thaw out the MR and dirt collector drains with a fusee and leave them cracked with a slight air blow to expel the moisture.
Working on the railroad is no diffrent then plumbing things get cold but the rails a.k.a. employes take it with no probem. an old rail once told me while kicking cars "these cars are not eggs hit em hard "and there is no problem cold makes the air hoses stiff to join and air takes longer to retrieve and rail can break but thats why we have rail inspections hot and cold .Ya just have to buck it up.