Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Common Challenges With Railroad Track Inspection

By Linda Ruiz


The tracks where trains are traveling on should be properly inspected to ensure that it will not cause any safety hazards to the train and its passengers. Thus, there is a need for regular railroad track inspection. This is the activity that will ensure that trains can safely pass by certain areas since the tracks are safe to use and in good condition.

Since the said activity is necessary, it is important to have the right company do the task. However, even the said company will have some common challenges they need to face when they are doing the said activity. Here are some of the common challenges that the said company will face when they are given the task to inspect the tracks.

The first challenge that must be faced when it comes to this is the allotment of a sufficient period of time for the said task. There must be enough time for the company to cover the entire railway. If the company is forced to work on a limited time, then the assessment may not be as accurate as what you need it to be.

Since there needs to be a longer period of time, it will be challenging for the said company to actually handle the work without impacting the revenues of the said train company. If there are inspections carried out, the operations of the trains have to be stopped. If it is stopped indefinitely or for a long period of time, this will definitely affect the revenues negatively.

There is also a need for the said company to identify any existing rail breaks before they cause derailment. The company who owns the train will definitely have a difficult time whenever there are derailments, because that means they have to pay a lot and even suffer from negative reputation. This is one of the challenges to meet in this activity.

Visibility is a primary concern for trains too. Thus, the inspections will also need to check up on this matter during the said project. There is a need to actually inspect whether the trains will have no obstructions, in terms of visibility, whenever it is running on the tracks. This is usually considered to be as visibility calculation.

Safety and maintenance is very challenging as well. This is where the usability of the tracks should be inspected to ensure that the trains can safely pass there. If there are damaged part, it is a must to repair it as early as possible. The maintenance should be done regularly to ensure that the tracks will not get damaged so easily.

The track geometry also needs to be checked. This is the best way to ensure that each of the tracks are of one foot increment. If it is more than that, then there has to be some changes that should be carried out. The same goes if the increment in between tracks is less than one foot.

Other challenge still needs to be checked. If you can overcome these challenges, then you should be able to get proper assessment of what needs to be done to the tracks. It will be worth it to face these challenges since it will ensure the safety of everyone passing by the tracks to a train.




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