One of the things that turns up with some frequency, especially in recent years, has been that we have had locomotives available that would be the envy of Baldwin, Lima, Alco, and even Roanoke in terms of their condition, but we have had no place to run them, and correspondingly, have also sometimes been short on decent cars to run with them.

Part of the difficulty, at least in regard to cars, is that the railroads and Amtrak have a different set of standards for cars than the FRA, which essentially exempts equipment in tourist service or in an operation of an historic nature. Robert MacDowell, in a recent comment in another thread, suggested a third standard was needed, something that wasn't completely exempted, but not the standard for cars operating on a high-speed corridor at over 100 mph.

What might such a standard look like?

I would suggest initially looking at what used to be the standard of about 30 years ago as a starting point. Back then, late in the era of the Interstate Commerce Commission, what was required were that the cars (or a steam locomotive) be in "interchange condition." Those standards of the time, largely going back to the steam era and updated over the years, covered things like wheel wear limits, coupler height limits or tolerances, air brake test and stencil data, lubrication data, and other things--all of which are still in the modern standards, of course.

Talking with a manager who was then at MARC, I was told that the then-current standards for interchange for passenger cars included Type F "tightlock" couplers and roller bearings. At that time, these would have been the expensive bits in bringing heavyweight cars up to interchange standards; most of the heavyweights around then still had plain bearings and Type E couplers (a standard type also used on freight cars). If I'm remembering correctly, bulletproof glass, air conditioning, and HEP weren't required then, except by Amtrak for HEP, and in a pinch, you could just rig pass-through cables on your old heavyweight. As other rules of the ICC were in effect at the time, the railroad would have to accept such a car if it were in interchange condition. At that time, I don't think frame rules applied to passenger cars, and I'm not sure there was a truck tear-down rule in effect then; part of the reason those rules eventually came into force were due to the increasingly extreme age of cars like the heavyweights that were part of steam programs then.

There were also problems in the overall condition of some of the cars in excursion service then, even if they met interchange standards. I was in a car on a NS diesel excursion that had air conditioning problems; my contact at MARC commented that the car "has had air conditioning troubles for years." (It didn't help matters that this was a Budd-built coach from the 1940s for a southeastern carrier, with sealed windows.) This same contact mentioned some cars on the New River train that were "rust buckets," that also lacked working plumbing.

Things of course have changed in the last 30 years, and there have been some good reasons for them, but at the same time, some other equipment that should be perfectly usable and acceptable is not, partially because of them. This suggests Mr. MacDowell's "third set" of standards, perhaps as a form of limited exemptions as opposed to the total exemption that exists for historic and tourist carriers.

And so I open the floor. What might this third set of standards look like? What equipment could it apply to? Would wooden or composite cars be acceptable in this service, or are they something we need to retire from the main line and high speed service? As a corollary, what do we define as "high speed" or "main line" speed? And what sort of body would draw up these new standards, and lobby for their adoption? (I picture it being a group from the tourist road industry comparable to the one that put together the current boiler standard.)

Stepping aside now. . .

Where are the cars for the 3rd set of standards going to run?

I presume the assumption is that a "third' set of standards can be accepted by the "Big Seven" mainline railroads if they so choose, or that the "Big Seven" or other regionals or passenger carriers can be persuaded, through a combination of salesmanship and demonstrated competence, to provisionally accept such standards for such things as a once-a-year, special-occasion, or infrequent excursion series.

To go to another example: suppose ASTSF 2926's group could assemble a set of cars for trips over Raton Pass out of Albuquerque and/or Trinidad, with oversight by the New Mexico Rail Runner commuter service.......

Take a look at these:

http://www.aptastandards.com/Documents/ ... fault.aspx

Ed

It would run on railroads other than existing tourist railroads, typically behind mainline steam or an excursion diesel. The idea would be to sell the standard to UP and NS, but I suspect more runs would tend to be on regionals and state owned lines.



I cannot speculate on the specific requirements, that's up to the stakeholders. Notably the railroads we want to run on. FRA has already made their position clear, unless we successfully enroll them in a blanket waiver or change of reg.

START by reading all relevant FRA regs at the "xxx.3 Applicability" section. That tells you where FRA thinks the reg needs to apply, and where they think it does not need to apply. Note that FRA has a special regulatory category for
"passenger cars that are historical or antiquated equipment and are used only for excursion, educational, recreational purposes or private transportation purposes." You're going to get a big surprise reading 223. I just did!

Other than that, the big-gorilla stakeholders are going to be the railroads we want to run on. Amtrak has no say, except to the extent they want a say because we borrow their engines or run Kalamazoo-Porter or Harrisburg-Philly. (in our GG1).

Anyway let me make some arm-waving wild guesses.

* HEP cabling is absolutely not required at all. Lighting and passenger comfort is for us to work out.

* Plain bearings may be allowed, if a failsafe system is developed to sensor them. Plain bearings fail slowly and a sensor noting 10 degrees hotter than its neighbors is ample to tell you to check the bearing.

* Open windows, maybe.

* End doors of every coach must be lockable from the inside. So people don't fall off the back end.

* Window glazing standards either lighter than 223, or testing standards more practical than 223. We'd have to evaluate how often moving tourist trains actually get shot at. Given that they rarely move through the Bronx. This is a blank sheet of paper. We can even draw up 2 standards, "A" which is merely "no flying shards", and "B" which requires 223-like glazing with a sensible testing regimen, e.g. take a specimen to the gun club and sign some papers. Crandic might require "A" but Metro-North might require "B".

Just thinking off the top of my head. This would be very specific and detailed work by a committee obviously.