Interface - The Journal of Wheel/Rail Interaction

STRESS REDUCTION

Reducing the Stress State on Canadian Pacific’s Western Corridor (continued)

The percent of forces exceeding 45 kN was also reduced substantially. The net result is that implementation of an effective TOR friction control program provided further reductions in damaging lateral loads, over and above the improvements achieved through distributed power.

Results in Western Canada

Looking at rail wear results, the data shown in Figure 5 is taken from a comprehensive “100%-effective friction management” program executed in collaboration between CP, the NRC-CSTT, Portec Rail and Kelsan Technologies in 2004 / 2005. This Figure illustrates the reductions in rail wear (a higher number is better). The figure also shows reductions in high rail and low rail wear with the implementation of TOR friction control in addition to gauge-face lubrication. It is divided into curvature categories: mild curves (less than 5 degrees), moderate curves (between 5 and 8 degrees) and sharp curves (greater than 8 degrees). Reductions in total aggregate wear, including both natural wear under traffic and grinding are seen on the order of 16% - 37% in mild curves, 32% - 39% in moderate curves, and 27% - 37% in sharp curves. This represents an overall average of 31% reduction in aggregate wear.

Fuel Savings

Q-tron fuel-consumption data was collected on the Cascade, Thompson and Shuswap subdivisions between September and March and normalized to yield liters-per-thousand gross ton miles. The blue bars shown in Figure 6 are pre-TOR normalized fuel consumption; the green bars are post-TOR consumption.

The Cascade, Shuswap and Mountain subdivisions show reductions in fuel consumption on the order of an 8%, going from a pre-TOR to a post-TOR condition. The Thompson subdivision seems to represent an anomaly. There are two reasons for this. 1) The Thompson subdivision was the location of the pilot project that the business case was built on. That subdivision already had 14 TOR lubricators in place as the pilot, so it should have shown a lower benefit. 2) In the course of this first year, however, a dedicated lubrication maintainer bid off the job and it took several months to replace him. As a result, there were several months during the year with reduced lubricator maintenance, application and effective coverage. In effect, this provides proof in the opposite sense: The subdivision that already had friction control in place went through a period in which the friction control was not maintained, and the associated penalty can be seen.

Conclusions
The optimal placement of distributed power has significant impacts and can result in higher train velocities, reductions in forces and track structure savings. Total friction management also has the effect of reducing the stress state, with the corresponding business case (which included the cost of deployment of hardware and consumables, and the addition of seven new dedicated positions), projecting less than a two-year payback on the project.

The combination of the two technologies clearly shows that there are synergies to be realized from the interplay between optimized distributed power, optimized superelevation and the implementation of effective friction control.

Mike Roney is General Manager - Technical Standards, Canadian Pacific

This article is based on a presentation made at Advanced Rail Management’s Wheel/Rail Interaction Seminar, May 2009.

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