Large Scale Central

Slippery Rail

Prototypes
#1

This time of year in Western CT and all around NYC the railroads are battling a condition called Slippery Rail. The local stone train that brings 20-40 hoppers of stone up to Danbury from Long Island Sound usually runs two or three extra locomotives this time of year to battle the condition, especially when it rains. After a big day of rain on Tuesday, I had planned to go railfan the stone train, but I got involved in something and missed it. I did see the Metro North High Rail truck with two modified power washers mounted on the back. I had no idea what it was until I read this article posted on the local train list…

STAMFORD, Conn. — The slimy remains of wet, slippery leaves on
Metro-North railroad tracks slowed about 60 rush-hour trains on the
New Haven Line on Monday morning, the railroad said.

Each train was slowed by five to 10 minutes, said Dan Brucker, a
spokesman for the railroad.

The perennial condition, known as “slippery rail,” causes train wheels
to slip or slide on the slimy leaves when an engine tries to speed up
or slow down, Brucker said.

“The slipperiest thing you can have on the tracks is not snow or ice.
It is wet leaves,” Brucker said. “The leaves get crushed and form a
substance called pectin which makes the trains slide.”

In some cases, the condition activates the train’s automatic control
system and halts it completely when the train exceeds what is
considered a safe speed.

To prevent excessive delays, the railroad has reprogrammed the
software of the M7 railcars to allow the braking system to adjust to
the slip-slide conditions.

A computerized train tracking system also allows for automatic
reporting of slip-slide incidents and conditions, enabling repair
crews to handle the problem more quickly, Brucker said.

Another drawback of “slippery rail” is that it can wear down train
wheels, requiring already scarce train cars to be taken out of service
for repairs, Brucker said.

By noon Monday, railroad workers were running a special power washing
machine to clean the slime off the tracks, Brucker said.

“We’re continuing to work to minimize the delays caused by this
problem,” Brucker said.

#2

Pectin? Where’s the jelly?
Sounds like they could use some sandboxes on those cars.

-Brian

#3

:smiley: The engines have sanders. Sand is ineffective against the goo. I really wish I had gotten a picture of that hi-rail power washer.

#4

Not only puts wear on the wheels but can also cause rail damage. Later RJD

#5

The local freight job has had to double the hill with the morning drag up the hill from Winston several times this year because of that very problem.

#6

Well, if I don’t forget again, tonight should be a good night to railfan the local stone train. Rain is predicted and the leaves are coming down fast now. The train, P&W’s CT-2, always runs push-pull mode with 3 or 4 locos split front and rear to allow working the facing point industry where no convenient run-around exists. When the rail is slippery they can have up to 7 locos usually split 4 - 3. Problem is the train arrives about 10:30 PM. By 10 I’m usually nearly asleep watching TV and don’t remember to go chase the train until it’s too late. Here’s a rare daylight photo of the East end of CT-2 laid over at Danbury, CT in September 2005 [url=lsc.cvsry.com/CT-2_Dan002_1024.jpg]

(http://lsc.cvsry.com/CT-2_Dan002_640.jpg)

[/url] Click for a larger image

#7

Nice trackage, do they bend it that way? Wow!

#8

The telephoto lens greatly compresses the distance between joints, but the sags are there. The far left track doesn’t get use much as it ends just behind the camera. It’s used for parking MOW equipment and such. The main track with the train on it is quite a bit better, but still sags at every joint. This area doesn’t see much traffic at all anymore so maintenance is minimal. A lot of the Housatonic Railroad (owners of half of the track in the shot) is still jointed rail. They have improved a lot of it to get 25 MPH track speeds, but this area is 10 MPH or less. On the improved sections it’s a treat to hear a train go by at track speed pounding the joints :smiley:

#9

Jon:

When they operate in “push pull,” how are the unmanned locomotives at the other end of the train controlled?

BTW, I love railfanning industrial switch jobs. I picked up a friend (fellow train nut) at Oakland Airport late one night and we decided to visit some of the NWP stations on our way back to Mendocino County. Got to the Cloverdale Station about 1:30am, and there was a set of 6 SD9s working a sawmill directly across from the station. Couldn’t leave until they got out of sight southbound.

A few months later the Cloverdale Station burned to the ground and a couple of years later the sawmill became a housing site and the entire local Cloverdale Yard area was rebuilt to just one single end siding and a small maintenance / storage building. Trains stopped running shortly after. Now there is hope to get freight running again on at least the southern part of the NWP line in the next year or so.

My friend and I often mention that night: Only thing missing was a camera!

Happy RRing,

Jerry

#10

Hi Jerry, They run a 4 man crew on this job. The rear-end locomotives are controlled by a second engineer. They generally just idle the rear locos except when ascending a long grade with the incoming loads. On the way home with empties the trailing locos are rarely throttled up but might be used for brakes descending the hill if needed. On the P&W every crew member is certified for every crew position. They rotate jobs every day. Makes for happy crews since they aren’t always stuck out in the cold and wet doing the ground work. From now until they quit for winter, then again in early spring, is the best time to railfan this job. All of the switching takes place right next to publicly accessible land, but in summer the brush is so thick you can’t see. They generally pull 40 empties, then switch in two strings of 20 loaded hoppers each. The lead locos idle on the main while the trailing locos do all the switching work. Somewhere in the Operations forum I wrote a post detailing their operation a year or so ago. Once in a great while they will come North on a different track and go around the balloon track at Danbury with 40 loads. This is an awesome sight/sound/smell show as it takes everything they’ve got to fight the drag of the tight curve around the loop. This photo is very old (1950’s ?) but the track configuration remains…

(http://lsc.cvsry.com/DanburyLoop.JPG)

#11
Jon Radder said:
On the improved sections it's a treat to hear a train go by at track speed pounding the joints :D
I miss that sound! It used to be much easier to hear the trains going by in the canyon near us before they upgraded the track to welded rail.