Why Santa Fe switched - Superior Rail Testing Performance

Railway Age, June, 1992

Atsf contracted with private companies for rail flaw detection-both to save money to benefit from new technologies surpassing "anything we were capable of."

Every major railroad spends a lot of money on the operation of rail flaw detection equipment. Until last March 1, Santa Fe was the last major U.S. railroad to do the job in-house, using its own equipment and personnel.

On March 1, that changed. Rail flaw detection on Santa Fe is now done by contractors, with Sperry Rail Service handling the western half of the railroad and Herzog Services Inc. (which recently acquired the technology of SStech Railway Technology) doing the work on the eastern half.

* Why Santa Fe switched.

Under Chairman, President and CEO Rob Krebs, Santa Fe managers are under orders to examine everything that the railway does, in order to find ways of doing it better, more efficiently and more economically.

Rail flaw detection was one of the areas that went under the microscope. Mike Franke, vice president-maintenance, says that while Santa Fe had an effective, high-quality program, it was also an expensive program. So, the railway looked at the alternatives. It checked with other carriers, all of which were contracting rail flaw detection.

Feedback, Mike Franke says, was generally positive. Santa Fe looked at other roads' experience, it investigated quality control programs, it looked at prediction models available and under development.

As Franke points out, rail testing is but one part of an overall rail planning program, though a vital part: How do you relate testing programs to future rail relay requirements? Where are your highest defect frequency rates? Are they limited to curves? Are they limited to certain stretches of a subdivision? How many miles per day are the various vehicles capable of testing? Can you avoid premature rail relay in some cases by being able to test more frequently?

When all the studies were completed, Santa Fe contracted. Procedures have been developed, Franke says, that "we believe will give us the quality we're used to."

Rigid specifications were given to both contractors, and Santa Fe has two people assigned to managing the program, one handling administrative management to ensure that testing schedules are adhered to and that invoices are correct, and the other dedicated to quality assurance aspects including rail-breaking testing and riding with detection crews on an atrandom basis to make sure they're getting necessary track-time and to make sure that Santa Fe is getting the work done that it's paying for.

Santa Fe plans to do about 38,000 miles of testing this year, and Mike Franke has been pleased with the work of the contractors thus far.

As of early May, for example, Sperry had completed coverage of its assigned territory once, Santa Fe lines west of Amarillo, Tex., and La Junta, Colo. For this contract, Sperry has assigned three self-propelled rail-bound induction/ultrasonic flaw detection cars and nine crew members (three chief operators, three operators and three assistant operators), plus supervisors.

Herzog, meanwhile, has begun leasing Santa Fe's hi-rail testing vehicles and hiring a number of former Santa Fe people. Down the line may come new equipment, making use of high-speed, non-stop testing equipment. Also down the line may be the use of the analysis technology Herzog now has, a program to predict the risk of defect failures. Santa Fe is interested in this enhancement.

* Speed and savings.

As for speed of operation, Sperry's rail-bound equipment is somewhat faster in operation than Santa Fe's hi-rail ultrasonic equipment. What Herzog can eventually bring to the table is a faster testing technique.

But speed isn't everything, not unless you have the support capabilities to back it up. It makes no sense, to put it another way, to be able to test 200 miles of track in a short time if you lack the capability to move in and make rail change-outs. But obviously a railroad wants to know where defects are, and, Franke says, "the faster and the more often we can get across the system, the better off we are. We're gearing toward that, toward faster speeds, covering more territory more often. But we need the proper support, the rail change-out equipment and the people in the right locations. We do have some time to gear up to the speed of new equipment. And in the meantime, we certainly will not be doing less than what we have been doing."

Obviously, this is a significant change in operations for Santa Fe.

And there will be an economic savings, since Santa Fe will not have to maintain and replace its own vehicles, develop equipment, maintain a shop and employ its own people. But, Franke says, economics is not the sole factor.

With both contractors, available and emerging technology is of great interest to Santa Fe. Franke thinks that the new technologies "will surpass anything we were capable of doing." The prediction modeling technology is one of them.

Sometimes, he observes, "when you do things internally, you get a little shielded and you don't see everything that's going on outside."