Hello Everyone,

I have a couple questions. After reading this subject, you may wonder what this has to do with preservation..... Some of you work at operating museums, so this is more relavant to you folks. Now-a-days Preventative Maintenance is a big thing in industry and even railroads practice it. What I am wondering is out of all of the operating musuems and tourist railroads, what do you do for preventative maintenance? The older the equipment, the more PM is needed to keep from having a catashrphic failure. So, what do you do, how do you do it and in what time frame? Is your pm schedule written down or just followed? Do the people that do the pm's understand why or the proper procedure? I'm talking more above and beyond the 92 day inspection, etc...

I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Stuart

(boy I sound like an engineer..... a process engineer, maybe.....)

Greetings:

In my capacity, I deal with PM + runnig repair issues on a fleet of rail transit equipment in a major US city. Although the agency I work for does need to to comply with FRA regs. we do have the Cal. PUC codes to handle, and are audited by the state tri-annually.

I cannot speak for the museum world, as far as what you might look at and how often and what proceedure you might to complete the "PM task or function".

What I would offer is to say that what ever written "proceedures" and following check lists your organization decides to put in place and play, be sure your organization can adiquietly complete the tasks at hand at their given intervals.

Should your group ever find your organization being subjected to an audit, your organization will be rudely surprized if there are written proceedures and practices that have not been followed or followed up on.

Hope this is of some value to you.

Sincerely,

Karl Johnson

Stuart:

At Strasburg, observing the law provides the opportunity for most of our preventive maintenance. You seemed to flag 92 day, 30 day and the daily inspections for locomotives. There are also the annuals and other Part 230 regs.

For freight cars, there is Part 232.305/AAR S-486, and Part 215. The FRA also requires a biennial inspection of our restricted, historic freight cars.

"Passenger" (read, historic, excursion) equipment is inspected at regular intervals that reflect miles run per week. This is in addition to the daily, Part 232 Appendix B requirements. Excursion equipment also receive their annuals.

We feel that a regular program of PM is essential to reliable, safe operations. We "catch" enough stuff at an early stage, which has convinced us that on a railroad, there is no skimping on PM and getting away with it.

This post struck a chord with me as it's a battle a number of us at SCRM are fighting right now.

Our CMO is a "fix it when it breaks" man. He'll change the oil in the locos and such (in fact he's usually guilty of TOO MUCH oiling). But he absolutely WILL NOT do other PM-type things, like replacing belts or hoses before they break, etc. He won't even crank up "sleeping" locomotives, which of course means the batteries go bad. Then he gets behind in repairs and complains that everything is breaking. Our "little" locomotives don't even have any fuel in them now, and haven't been cranked up since the FRA said we couldn't use them on trains some six or eight years ago. They all used to run, but I bet we'll have all sorts of problems with them now if we ever do get them fired up.

I get particularly annoyed because this guy is fond of using one battery for several different pieces of equipment. So you go to use something and have to go track down a battery for it, which is usually dead, so then you have to charge the damned thing, and by that time half the damned day is wasted! Keeping good batteries in stuff and RUNNING everything for a few minutes once a month or so would solve the problem.

"That wastes fuel," we're told.

Personally, I'd rather "waste" a few ounces of fuel than half a day getting something to run. GRRRRRGH!

Hi Everyone,

This is good stuff to know. I'm somewhat familiar with the daily and 92 day inspection, but the others, I'm not as familiar with.

Do any of you use oil or filter analysis or go above and beyond those pm's mandated by the FRA?

What I'd like to know is what constitutes a good program for a railroad. The Strasburg seems to have a very reliable program in place. Maybe this discussion will help others be more diligent in their PM programs rather than run it till it breaks and get something else.....

Thanks again,

Stuart

At the Western Railway Museum, we have an annual maintenance week just before Memorial Day, which is the start of our summer season.

All of our operable equipment is run through the shop, and crews work on all aspects of each car, including
1. Body (tightening loose screws, lubricating seat mechanisms, applying preservative to leather/plastic upholstery, etc.)
2. Power collectors (pantographs or trolley poles) - lubricate and adjust as needed.
3. Running gear (lubricate journals, couplers, etc.)
4. Traction motors - inspect commutators and brushes, lubricate motor bearings, put grease in gearboxes.
5. Controllers - check segments, lubricate, etc.
6. Air brakes and compressors.

All the work is documented on a checklist for each car, and deferred maintenance items are also noted.

This systematic scheduled maintenance has really paid off in reduced failures in service.

I must acknowledge that maintenance week is also supported by our operating department folks who serve as hostlers, and other volunteers who prepare free lunches and dinners for the crew.

In addition to maintenance week, we do a semi-annual mini-service on several of our heavily-used cars. We also run our two Key System bridge units through the shop just before our heavy Pumpkin Patch operations in October.

Finally, we have a couple of volunteers who do a monthly oiling of most
of the journal bearings on operable cars.

Along with the already shared ideas which are all good, I have an add on to this subject. At Mid Continent RR Museum in the 60's and early 70's there didn't seem to be any real preventive maintainence program. In about 1971 or 1972 I was helping out in the shop for the summer. We about burned up a journal on the Montreal #1. We saved it just barely with lots of trips over the pit. This problem started a PMS program, maybe loosely but it was a start. That same summer the same loco was foaming really bad and Rudy Flugal {engineer} asked us to wash out the boiler. We got wheel barrows full of crud out of a single washing. These two instances I believe started a "regular" maintainence schedual, loosely maybe, but a start anyway. Now with compliance to FRA rules, it is more mandated anyway.

What I really wanted to touch on is where some unnecessary wear and tear came from, beyond already being worn out and needing a quality rebuild. In the case of the Monteal #1 hot box, we found that the operators were as much as fault as the journals being worn out. Now Rudy Flugal {daily engineer} was real good at keeping things oiled and reported any problems that might start occurring. This kept minor problems from becoming large ones. Rudy was a shop man from day one, he knew what made these tea kettles go. The weekend crews were often a different story. While most were concientious operators, some didn't like to get dirty and climb around and oil. They were busy playing engineer. Another thing we found out is that the crews were not blowing off the boiler on the bridge like they were told to. The exhaust went straight down in front of the firebox. When they wouldn't use the bridge all the cinders, dirt, and junk went spraying all over the inside of the frame area. Anything with oil collected the "grit". When we pulled the oil cellers to repack them, we found cinders, dirt and grit all over the packing and bearing surfaces. When we would try and confront the operating crews nobody knew anything about anything. You could see that they would run the engine up the hill and blow off, yet nobody was doing it. In those days few of the engineers worked in the engine house ever, so it didn't sink in on what was involved to fix this foolishness or why the rules were inportant to follow. It was probably only a few guys involved, most were good people.

A PMS program is a must, plain and simple. It should include shop air compressors and machine tools too. The point is that the daily oiling and inspections are as important and the weekend warriors need to be diligent in making sure they are oiling and checking the more common trouble areas.

I am glad to say that I think MC has come along way since then, but if we ever get steam up and running again it will be like training a whole new crew all over. Now the operating crews are pretty much the same as the shop crews, so I don't think there will be as big a problem. Your crews can make or break your trains. If we all had to fix what we use, we would treat the equipment and tools with more care. Stickly my own opinions as usual. John.

I believe that somebody is confusing "Predictive Maintenance" ( a recent concept in some industries) with preventative maintenance- a concept as old as the hills.

One has to wonder about the efficacy of the FRA 92 day inspection (part 229)when applied to a tourist or entertainment type railroad operation as follows:

All codes and standards tend to be the minimum number of criteria to get the job done.

The FRA 92 inspection is more concerned with "safety" versus the protection of integrity and functionality of expensive components such as diesel engines, etc.

By way of example, a GP-38-2 with AC/DC transmission,sealed electrical cabinet, modular switchgear....may respond to a 92 day maintenance interval in a different fashion versus...a fifty year old Alco RS-3.

Dave

Regarding the maintenance of diesel locomotives, the railroad industry in general is running several years behind their counterparts in the marine transportation and power generating industries who use diesel power. Those folks have a much higher cost of downtime and many of them have entered all their various equipment suppliers maintenance recommendations into computer systems both at the equipment and in the main office. These are programmed to spit out the maintenance events to the operator on duty, including in some cases copies of all the pertinent instructions and procedures for doing the job. The marine guys have taken it one level higher and now a number of them have the satcom linked computer system order the parts and report delivery status so everything is on the pier when the vessel makes landfall.

I am also a member at Mid Continent Railway Museum. I help out with the maintanence of our operating Diesel locomotives. We take an oil sample at each 92 day inspection. The main elements that we are looking at is the soot content and any abnormal levels of wear metals. If the soot content gets above a certain percentage, then we will change the oil. Along with the required items that have to be checked/adjusted, we clean the oil bath air cleaner, grease all drive shaft bearings (radiator fan, traction motor blowers, air compressor...) and battery electrolyte level. Every 30 running days we will check/add oil to the traction motor support bearing sumps. These are some of the items that we do. I may have missed some items, that is what a check list is for.

Ed