Locomotive Levitation Testing Frequency

During the course of my role as a LEV Test engineer I was asked to conduct a LEV Testing frequency study for one of the two railroads in Delaware which are owned by Conrail and Potomac Central Railroad (PCR). The study had been requested by both PCR and EPR and given the task of looking into the potential costs and benefits of increasing the LEV frequency from its current level of 7 mph to a high of ten mph. In addition to studying the economics of increasing the rate, it is also important to examine the safety benefits of doing so. The study found that increasing the LEV Testing frequency by just one percent could save up to one billion dollars per year on OSHA compensation and about three thousand workers a year out of accidents on the railroad. The study concluded that the benefits of increasing the testing to ten miles per hour would be three times more than the cost of increasing the rate by one percent.

Based on my conversations with the engineers of both the Conrail and PCR, it is clear to me that they would prefer to have the additional benefit of having the LEV Testing frequency increase on the back of their pay rather than get paid for the cost of increased traffic on the railroad. This is a real cost-saving benefit to them, but it appears to be an unnecessary cost to the taxpayer. Perhaps the engineers would like to be involved in the decision making process as much as possible. There were a few occasions when I conveyed the fact that I thought the engineers were being less than truthful in their presentations to me, and that if the frequency increase was going to create such a significant financial savings for them, then they needed to participate in the decision making process.

There were a number of member posts between me and one of the engineers from the PCR who were pushing strongly for a ten mile LEV Testing frequency increase. One of the member posts asked, "What about all the train traffic coming in from the other direction?" After considering the benefit to us of having a ten mile LEV Testing frequency (vs. a four mile) I replied to this member, "You're right, but there's another thing we can do." I explained to him that we could add another member track and run ten miles without using the extra member track.

It's been my experience that when there is an economic downturn, companies tend to be a little more conservative with their investments. They may not want to put as much money as they did in the previous year into the railroad." Indeed, this makes sense and yet, I had never really thought about this. I suppose it depends on whose job it is to manage the company's assets.

Anyway, we decided to try it out. After ten miles we had another engineer speed bump. The third engineer, who was not familiar with the track layout, wasn't concerned and went down to see what was going on. He found that we had two locomotives coming in on the other side of the track at the same time and was thinking, "Why don't we just run them both at the same frequency and combine the gain and stop signals?" We let him do this and within fifteen seconds we were back on the trestle with another locomotive pulling out.

Now if you don't have another engineer to watch the train, it might be a good idea to add another locomotive. I recommend that you don't try to do more than two miles at a time at the first test. But that's another story. In any case, it's good to know that when you are doing your own testing frequency adjustments, it's easy to make mistakes. And those mistakes can cost you time and money. View here for more information about the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_recovery_ventilation.