I believe if ABDW, or any other AB style brake valve, is used on a passenger car, it no longer falls under the FRA freight car maintenance requirements. Periodic maintenance would fall under the Passenger Car rules in Part 238. Paragraph 238.309.d.1 requires AB style brake valves used in passenger car service be serviced every 2208 days, which is about six years.

Read 238.3.

After you read 49 CFR 238.3, read the attached files. It is best to first read -0005; the necessary new standard is attached to -0001.

Until this waiver was approved, the official interpretation for freight valves on passenger equipment (not Part 238) was the last year that S-045 was referenced in the AAR Field Manual of Interchange Rules, which was 1991. That specified 16 years for ABDW and and lesser for older valves. One of the clarifications included in the new S-4045 was the use of the current version of the Field Manual, and this is clarified in 2.1.3 of the new S-4045.

While the waiver is good for five years, the Tourist and Historic and Private Passenger Car Working Group of the FRA Rail Safety Advisiory Committee is drafting new rule text to make S-4045 the permanent reference. Draft rule text also will deal with obsolete valves no longer suported by the AAR rules. I will be giving a seminar including the progress of the committee twice on Saturday as part of the ATRRM convention in Tyler, TX.

Regards,

Steve Zuiderveen

Very glad to hear that all of that is being "neatened up". Once upon a time I had an FRA MP&E inspector ask me to walk him through how we determined the schedule for servicing our brake equipment. Between the references to the old power brake rules and the mix of several different types of brake schedules it seemed that no one at the FRA had been able to explain it to his satisfaction. He asked me to type up the explanation and it was supposedly taken to a meeting of FRA inspectors. Never heard what the reaction was.

Lots of excursion trains are going out of business if I am reading this right. No more straight plate/rim stamped wheels even in tourist railroad service, no more friction bearings, and no more black collar axles? Can you provide a little clarification on the scope of this rule?

My interpretation is the only part of the S4045 standard that applies is the intervals for air brake valve changeout, as that is all that is mentioned under CFR 232 appendix B 232.17 b 2. Steve if this is incorrect please let us know.

Mike Tillger

Some years ago, I remember reading or hearing about an express car brake, possibly a variation of one of the freight car brakes, that switched between direct and graduated release automatically. If it detected that it was in passenger service, through the presence of air in the conductor's signal line, it would operate in graduated release. No idea what schedule this was, but is this something that might work here? I would imagine that brake pipe pressure, through a very tight check valve, could be used to emulate pressure from the conductor's signal line.

Mike, you are correct. However; FRA also considers the single car test that is performed to validate the change-out to be a federal requirement. While the remainder of S-4045 would form a good published industry standard to use for your own purposes (even if you were not AAR) they are not federal standards at this time.

Steve

the schedule was AB-1B. I have a pamphlet boxed up somewhere but I can't remember what it did.

49 CFR 238 does not apply to Tourist, scenic, historic, or excursion operations, whether on or off the general railroad system of transportation.

So yes, the mere fact that your passengers get on and off your train in the same location exempts you from 238. Of course, FRA's Emergency Order authority remains, so they will still do moron-check, like missing brake pipe, 5 foot holes in floor, etc. You merely need to show practices which make sense for you, and if Boeing can recommend "no interval, run to failure" on a CFM56, why not on an ABDW?

I also have a WABCO booklet that covers AB-1B, and also can't seem to lay my hands on it. If I recall, sensing pressure in the connection to the conductors signal line changed the braking rates, but I'm not sure it added graduated release. It's likely a moot point. Tourist railroad operators (got to be tourist RR's, if you change the brake schedule for convenience, you can't be a museum) want to make this change to go to a commonly available valve, and the AB-1B equipment now has to be as rare as hens teeth, so doesn't solve their problem.

Schedule AB-1-B uses a filling piece between the pipe bracket and AB emergency portion with a selector valve which incorporated a type A safety valve to introduce service limiting when the air signal line was charged as it would be on a passenger or mail and express train.

"Service Limiting" as the name suggests limits brake cylinder pressure during a service brake application but is nullified during an emergency application. It is a built in feature on U12, D22, & 26C.

As part of equipping cars for high speed service an A2 quick service valve was also used to improve the propagation time of BP reductions.

Amtrak uses a similar system on the Auto-Train but incorporates an H5 relay valve to link a safety valve into the pipe bracket BC line that fills an 800 cu in. dummy brake cylinder volume as well as acts as a 16 line to the relay valve. They also plugged the inshot bypass port on the pipe bracket.

Years ago Amtrak was working with the vendors on ABDW-G that incorporated graduated release as a component of the ABDW system. From what I understand it never gained acceptance.

EBL

Eight sets were used on Korean built cars for the Alaska Railroad in 1989. They are the only production ones that I know of.

Steve

We incorporate that same H-5 relayair valve linked to a safety in our conversation. The service limiting feature is cut off during an emergency application.