Automated FRA rail measuring car??

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gmushial

OBS Chief
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I came back to DAV from OMA on the CZ of the 19th and there was what I thought was private varnish at the head of the consist. I asked the conductor about it and he said that in fact it was an experimental FRA car that in realtime via lasers did rail separation and surface condition/roughness measuring/measurements - he said in fact he was also interested in the results, and that if I asked him later in the trip he might have something to say about what had been learned/discovered. I didn't manage to connect with him before leaving the train. So: are there others in this knowledgeable forum that know about such an experiment, the setup and maybe the tentative results?

[First thought the "private varnish" had to do with the new Siemens engine that had gone to Pueblo a couple weeks ago - but the conductor said that he had been on the train that had taken Joe Broadman and company there a couple days later... but this FRA car was unrelated... was actually quite impressed that he knew as much as he did about what was going on at Pueblo and the new engines etc... but I guess one doesn't work on a railroad and not like trains and what's new.]
 
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Unless there was an imminently disastrous issue with track at some point, I doubt that the FRA will even have the results available for months...
 
you sure it wasn't this one?

7-docs-train.jpg
 
This is a subset of a frame captured from a vid I took coming back through western Colorado... to me it looks like a 1940's passenger car that they used as their testbed/instrument platform [it's the 4th car in the train: 3 engines, the FRA car then the baggage car and the first coach car].

CZheadOf19th.jpg
 
So it seems... but definitely small world :) The conductor was quite impressed in the sense that the FRA people running the experiment, if it is successful, will be putting themselves out of business... yet they continue to take data. Actually I'm impressed also. Seems the idea is to outfit baggage cars with the electronics (or data taking only cars, like the FRA car we both saw), that simply get hitched into the consist and take data over the whole route they're dragged... Is supposed to look at rail separation, rail surface roughness, rail end gaps and switch gaps... but since I wasn't able to connect up with the conductor later, I never found out how successful they were being. Hence the posting here... in that generally there are Amtrak employees here that have inside skinny on many/most such experiments.

BTW - do you have any more information on what DOTX 221 is/was? My wildass guess (having never seen it up close) was a 1940s passenger car - was that anywhere close?
 
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BTW - do you have any more information on what DOTX 221 is/was? My wildass guess (having never seen it up close) was a 1940s passenger car - was that anywhere close?
I found a page that says it was built for Canadian National in 1954 by Pullman Standard as Cape Brule.
 
BTW - do you have any more information on what DOTX 221 is/was? My wildass guess (having never seen it up close) was a 1940s passenger car - was that anywhere close?
I found a page that says it was built for Canadian National in 1954 by Pullman Standard as Cape Brule.
Many thanks - I continue to be impressed with the level and depth of knowledge of the members here... this is yet another example thereof. Again, thanks - greg
 
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