Thursday, June 25, 1998 (Washington, DC ) FRA Announces New Track Safety Regulations

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) today announced updated track safety regulations that reflect significant changes in the railroad industry over the past two decades.

In developing the new regulations, FRA sought out the best available technical data about dynamic performance of vehicle and track systems to devise safety standards that are practical to implement. The new regulations were developed by a team of industry and government experts appointed by FRA’s Rail Safety Advisory Committee, a body of railroad industry representatives that regularly advises the agency on regulatory issues, and published in the Federal Register June 22, 1998.

"Safety is President Clinton’s highest transportation priority, and these new regulations demonstrate how industry and government can work together effectively as partners to advance the cause of transportation safety," FRA Administrator Jolene M. Molitoris said. "These standards will enhance railroad transportation and railroad safety well into the 21st century,"

The revised track safety regulations include a stricter, safer standard for "excepted track." Track lines designated by railroads as "excepted" are exempt from compliance with minimum requirements for roadbed, track geometry and track structure. The excepted track provision, which has been part of the track safety regulations for more than 15 years, permits railroads to conduct limited, slow-speed operations over substandard trackage on low density lines where it is unlikely that a derailment would endanger anyone along the right-of-way.

Under the revised regulations, excepted track will have to meet a minimum gauge requirement, and railroads will be obligated to perform periodic inspections of switches on excepted track. This change is designed to reduce the number and severity of derailments on trackage of many marginal lines.

Because of the continued popularity within the railroad industry of continuous welded rail, the revised track regulations issued today by the FRA also include new standards for the installation and maintenance of that type of rail.

Continuous welded railroad track is constructed with extremely long lengths of rail rather than traditional 39-foot lengths of rail. With far fewer rail joints than "jointed rail track," continuous welded rail offers a smoother ride and easier track and rail car maintenance. The long lengths of rail, however, are subject to high compressive or tensile forces which can result in the track buckling or pulling apart as the ambient temperature rises and falls. The revised track regulations require railroads to adopt written procedures addressing all aspects of installing and maintaining continuous welded rail and require that railroads offer training programs for their employees charged with installing or maintaining rail.

The revised track safety regulations also require railroads to conduct more frequent searches for internal rail defects. According to the FRA, such defects are anomalies within the rail used in track: their occurrence and growth are somewhat unpredictable, and they often are not readily observable to track inspectors. Under the revised regulations, intervals between internal rail inspections will be determined by the amount of traffic carried by the rails.

The new track standards permit each railroad to design its own electronic record keeping system as long as the system properly safeguards the integrity and authenticity of each record. Electronic record-keeping, which currently is allowed only through a lengthy waiver process, will aid railroads, as well as the FRA, in retrieving necessary information to assess the effectiveness of track maintenance programs.

Under the old regulations, internal rail inspections were required once annually, with no consideration for highly utilized trackage. Under the revised regulations, the frequency of internal rail inspections will be determined by a combination of elapsed time and the tonnage accumulated over the track since the last inspection. In addition, the requirement will now apply to all Class 3 trackage, which is capable of sustaining freight trains safely at 26 to 40 mph and passenger trains at 31 to 60 mph. Under the old regulations, the internal rail inspection requirements applied only to Class 3 trackage over which regularly scheduled passenger trains were operated.