Much of the PRR electrification was financed by loans from the RFC, hardly a subsidy since repayment of said loans was part of the package.
And don’t forget that the PRR elecdtrification included ATC!
There is now pending before the Commission docket No. 29543, which is an investigation instituted May 20, 1946, on its own motion, to determine whether it is necessary, in the public interest, to require any common carrier by railroad to install block signal system, interlocking, automatic train stop, train control and/or cab signal devices, and/or other similar appliances, methods and systems intended to promote the safety of railroad operation, upon the whole or any part of its railroad on which any train is operated at a speed of 50 or more miles per hour. Hearing therein will be held in the near future.
INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION
WASHINGTON
INVESTIGATION NO. 2988
CHICAGO, BURLINGTON & QUINCY RAILROAD COMPANY REPORT IN RE ACCIDENT AT NAPERVILLE, ILL., ON APRIL 26, 1946
Inv-2988
SUMMARY
Railroad: &nbs
The basic reason ATC and ATS were discarded on many lines is because the “higher speed” trains (> 79 mph) for which these systems were required went away as the intercity rail passenger network shrunk. The ICC and later the FRA had authority to allow removal in these cases. The CNW ATC system on its east-west line survived because most of the line didn’t have a wayside system.
[quote user=“Victrola1”]
There is now pending before the Commission docket No. 29543, which is an investigation instituted May 20, 1946, on its own motion, to determine whether it is necessary, in the public interest, to require any common carrier by railroad to install block signal system, interlocking, automatic train stop, train control and/or cab signal devices, and/or other similar appliances, methods and systems intended to promote the safety of railroad operation, upon the whole or any part of its railroad on which any train is operated at a speed of 50 or more miles per hour. Hearing therein will be held in the near future.
INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION
WASHINGTON
INVESTIGATION NO. 2988
CHICAGO, BURLINGTON & QUINCY RAILROAD COMPANY REPORT IN RE ACCIDENT AT NAPERVILLE, ILL., ON APRIL 26, 1946
Inv-2988
SUMMARY
Railroad: &nbs
Probably a big factor was the age of those mandated safety systems. Electrical components such as relays don’t last forever. Move forward several decades and replacement parts for obsolete technology are no longer readily available. Custom orders are expensive, assuming you can locate a supplier that is even interested in manufacturing the needed parts.
As a rough equivalent, go down to your local computer supplier and ask for one that can read a 5.25" floppy disk. Be prepared to get laughed at!
The only way to avoid the problem of obsolescence is to replace the entire system every 10 years or so, maybe even sooner with today’s rapidly changing technology. Those higher train speeds were of no benefit to the freight traffic, and passenger trains weren’t contributing enough to justify spending the money. So the speed of the few remaining passenger trains were reduced as a very cost-effective decision.
John
Yep.
Yes. PRR installed ATC on their electric fleet and on the passenger diesel locomotives. The diesel freight fleet was not ATC equipped. When Conrail stored the electric fleet and went with diesels under the wire, the level of safety dropped a bit since the diesels didn’t have ATC. ATC probably would have prevented the Chase MD crash which is why the FRA mandated it for ANY train on the corridor.
The old suppression style ATC which required a 17# reduction to prevent a penalty brake is was ill-suited for modern freight train operation, so Conrail invented LSL (“locomotive speed limiter”) in conjunction with Harmon Electronics (now part of GE) to perform the ATC function. It requires the train reduce speed and stay under a “worst case” braking curve by any mean available. Use of air brake is not required.
The combination of LSL and cab signal was offered as a product called “Ultracab” by Harmon. It exists today and the current version is the NS standard.
I must challenge these statements.
1 These systems are not obsolete. How could Metrolink have bought new ATS inductors and cab equipment for all their routes after Chatsworth?. As well BNSF’s transcon required new inductors for the additional double & triple tracking tracking. The ATS system is very robust and newer complete operating parts can be manufactured to new electrical standards. I can imagine if a single signal or CP needed new equipment it would be readily available.?
2. The assumption that all these Cab Signal systems is just for passenger seems very short sighted. If so why is both CSX & NS adding to these systems before and after PTC legislation/.
3. How many freight incidents in the past few years would have been avoided by a past system and a lot cheaper than PTC ?
4. The major differences are
IC’s ATS system was similar enough to C&NW’s so that Amtrak’s ex-IC units could lead out of Chicago on detours. The “Cab Signal from Hell” which could work with almost any ATS/ATC/Cab signal system was installed in the 1970s on some Amtrak E-units and SDP40Fs. Not sure what happened after that.
Is Harmon Electronics a separate former company that Hamon Automotive? Was Sidney Harmon involvled in Harmon Electronics?
[quote user=“blue streak 1”]
I must challenge these statements.
1 These systems are not obsolete. How could Metrolink have bought new ATS inductors and cab equipment for all their routes after Chatsworth?. As well BNSF’s transcon required new inductors for the additional double & triple tracking tracking. The ATS system is very robust and newer complete operating parts can be manufactured to new electrical standards. I can imagine if a single signal or CP needed new equipment it would be readily available.?
2. The assumption that all these Cab Signal systems is just for passenger seems very short sighted. If so why is both CSX & NS adding to these systems before and after PTC legislation/.
3. How many freight incidents in the past few years would have been avoided by a past system and a lot cheaper than PTC ?
Railroad were going bankrupt at a pretty good clip during the depression.
Coming out of WWII, there was heavy investment in plant and equipment for a few years, but by the late 1940s, the die was cast. Go read annual reports from the NYC and PRR during the first few years of the 1950s. Lots of gloom and doom. One telling fact (I forget where I read it) is that tie replacement rate on the NYC in the first part of the 1950s was about 1/10th of what it needed to be for steady state.
Both the NYC and PRR were in trouble and they knew it. They were “eating their foot” to stay alive. By the mid 1950s, they had pretty much given up. The NYC took another stab at shoring up the railroad when Perlman was around, but he was chewing through capital at a huge rate, and still not getting the property “over the hump”. To his credit, he was trying to make the Central relevant and useful, but truly profitable was beyond his grasp.
Safety is a relative term. There is no such thing as “Safe” and “Unsafe”. Some things and methods are safer than others but none are perfect. There are counterbalancing costs, too. There is only so much production capacity in the economy. If we spend some on “this” then it’s not available for “that”.
I have no idea. Harmon Electronics was (is) located in Grain Valley, MO. Just outside KC.
The incremental cost of adding cab signal to territory that is already using coded track circuits is pretty low. If your loco fleet is already equipped, and you can eliminate the wayside intermediate block signals, then it’s a “win” just based on that.
When Conrail had to replace the ancient and decrepit signal system on the B&A, they did exactly that. Despite all sorts of malfeasance between CR’s C&S dept and the supplier (that got a few pretty high up guys fired), it worked out well enough that it was the template for doing new signalling in other areas going forward. Plans for doing the ex-RDG Harrisburg Line and ex-PRR Alliance to Cleveland were in the works. CR started work on the Harrisburg Line and NS finished it, plus continued on with the Chicago line Alliance to Cleveland.
What makes the economic of it go is having to replace the block signal circuits.
CSX converted carrier frequency on the RF&P from 60 Hz to 100 Hz, but outside of that, I don’t know of any expansion of cab signalling on CSX.
Coded track circuit and wayside cab signal equipment has been microprocessor based since the mid-1980s. It had a bit of a bumpy start (US&S’s micro-code and micro-lock weren’t quite ready for “prime time” when they went in on Conrail’s Boston Line.)
The locomotive equipment followed closely behind. A basic Harmon Ultracab system was about 1/2 the price of a US&S non-solid state cab signal box in the early 1990s - and quite a bit more sophisticated. For example, it could do a ‘self test’ as well as “talk” to the cab electronics.
Don, you must be new around here .[swg]
I always wanted block signals for my model train layout, but when I was young, the electronics parts cost too much lawnmowing sweat, and now that I am old and transistors and LEDs are cheap, I simply don’t have the time.
So my railroad line has cab signals, that’s the ticket! And it sure does need them based on the double track with crossovers, reverse traffic passing, and the insane frequency of trains (didn’t I just see that same train go by just 20 seconds ago?).
And I operate my Talgo at way over 79 MPH.
(OK, OK, already, I will take my remarks over to the MR forum . . .)
“You’re filthy rich! You can drink any wine you want? Why do you drink THAT wine?”
“How do you think I got this rich!”
-ancient TV commercial for some kind of crappy wine…
Deferred or omitted maintenance was a way of using the cash flow to finance &q