ECP: A waiting game; Patience is a virtue for suppliers prepared to deliver frill-scale electro-pneumatic braking systems. Meanwhile, development and testing efforts haven't let up - electro-pneumatic braking systems - Industry Overview - Statistical Data Included

Railway Age, Jan, 2002 by Tom Judge

Suppliers say they are ready to deliver electro-pneumatic braking systems, but even after years of extensive R&D and numerous successful pilot applications, the railroads still haven't stepped forward to place major orders. So the research and testing continues, for now.

At the Transportation Technology Center, Inc., in Pueblo, Colo., the FAST train is running under ECP. Originally equipped with a cable (wireline)-based ECP brake system provided by TSM in 1996, it was updated in 2000 with Wabtec equipment.

"The update of ECP equipment was installed as part of a related research and demonstration program on technology integration into the locomotive cab," says TTCI Senior Engineer Brian Smith. "The demonstration was successful, and the crews like handling the train with ECP equipment because of the obvious benefits of train action, graduated release, etc. Additionally, the logistics crews enjoy the ECP switch mode as the time to switch cars in and out of the train is reduced significantly and the performance of the brake system is noticeable."

TTCI's formal demonstration program is ending, but Smith says the ECP system will still be available for demonstration and switching operations.

Burlington Northern and Santa Fe is perhaps the most active railroad pursuing ECP braking. "We are picking up the pace out west," says Carl Stendahl, director-car and locomotive air brakes/ETD for BNSF. "Out of 600 aluminum coal hoppers equipped with ECP brakes, we now have about 200 in service on the MOBA line. We have operated a large trainset of 135 cars in ECP."

New York Air Brake's EP60 is installed on the cars. The locomotive system employs NYAB's CCB air brake direcdy tied in so that the controllers operate with either pneumatic or electronic brakes. "A lot of complexity and redundancy is not required with a cable running down the train," says Stendahl. BNSF is changing the cars' cable connectors to confirm to a newer AAR design, and is installing ECP controls and wireline distributed power on 80 EMD SD70MAC locomotives.

BNSF has also been running an ECP-equipped taconite train in northern Minnesota, and there has been some interest from the Intermodal Marketing Group about an ECP train. Intermodal "takes more thought because intermodal cars just don't stay together like coal cars do," says Stendahl.

"Right now, one of the big things going on with AAR is standardization," says Brian McLaughlin, product manager for New York Air Brake. "NYAB and Wabtec re-evaluated the P122 transceiver from Echelon and accepted that as the standard for the communication path for the manufacturers. Everybody is moving ahead, adjusting the communications to accommodate the new specifications. On top of that, we're in the final phase, from the manufacturers' committee's point of view, of finalizing the AAR specifications so that they will become the standard for cable-based systems. We're hoping to have the AAR standards approved at the March meeting. AAR and the FRA have been participating in the spec writing. They've been there all along, but they have to formally approve it. Right now, we have completed our development of the hardware for the PL22 to the AAR-compliant systems, so both locomotive and car equipment hardware has been fully developed. We're now in the final phases of development for the AAR software for cable-based distributed power and ECP braking."

NYAB has more than 45 months of continuous operation with the ECP-equipped train running on Quebec Cartier Mining. "QCM has a new order for 12 GE Transportation Systems AG4400 locomotives that will be equipped with integrated CCB and EP60 locomotive systems," says McLaughlin. "This is the first fully integrated OEM ECP system on a new locomotive." The units are scheduled for delivery in spring 2002.

NYAB also received an order from South Africa's Spoornet, which is rebuilding 45 electric locomotives that operate in coal service, and which has a Wabtec-equipped ECP train in service. So far, Zeftron is retrofitting four of the locomotives with ECP. Spoornet is considering converting its entire coal fleet to ECP braking. "We expect to be demonstrating over there in the fourth quarter of this year," McLaughlin says.

GE Transportation Systems Global Signaling is working on Generation 3 of its radio-based [EP.sup.X] ECP system, the distinguishing characteristic of which is an onboard, self-contained power source using compressed air from the brake pipe. "We are developing prototypes for what we call the Pneumatic Power Unit," says Robert Foy, manager-train products. "There are several engineering problems we had to solve. Any time you're using air off the brake pipe, it's a sensitive issue. You have to be careful. You have to determine how much air you can use and in what manner. We think we have that figured out. When you know how much air you can use, then you work on how much electrical energy you can get from that air."

Is the amount of electrical energy that can be produced more than what's consumed by the electronics? "We understand the dynamics of the brake pipe to a very fine degree through computer modeling and validation on our 150-car brake rack," says Foy. "We have to design the conversion efficiency so we don't need to spend big dollars reducing the power consumption of our electronics. We need to be able to use industrial- or even military-grade electronics. To do that, we have to have very good air-to-power conversion efficiency. We have begun a second prototype of the PPU and we expect to have that through testing around June. Once we complete that, we'll know with a high degree of certainty what our production schedule will look like because we'll know exactly how much effort we have to put into the power-consumption aspects of the electronics."