Railway Interchange 2017 Buzz

Maintenance Technical Presentation: Effective and Practical Maintenance Solutions for Chronic Subgrade Locations (Room Sagamore Ballroom)

18 Sep 17
12:45 PM - 1:15 PM

Tracks: AREMA Full Program, AREMA Technical Sessions- Maintenance

Speaker(s): Stephen Ashmore, Sr. Director Innov Stds & Tech, Union Pacific Railroad

In today’s railroad environment field maintenance personnel are constantly challenged to eliminate slow order delay in very short maintenance windows. Many chronic slow order locations are driven by weak and unstable subgrade conditions often caused by the subgrades inability to effectively drain water. In these shortened maintenance windows these chronic locations are usually addressed by simply applying fresh ballast and surfacing without truly addressing and eliminating the root cause of the issue. There are some simple and effective ways that field maintenance forces can determine the root cause of the issue and fix it in short maintenance windows. The first step is properly analyzing the root cause of the failure. By running through a quick checklist field maintenance personnel can look for things that are leading to the failure including current drainage patterns, subgrade saturation and signs that the subgrade is actively failing. The Second step is determining a proper fix for the failure using several options including trench drains, shear keys, embankment stabilization and subgrade underlayment techniques. The third step is developing a plan that can be executed in a relatively short maintenance window often times with the majority of the work being done under Form-B track protection. In addition to this Union Pacific is performing large scale drainage improvement projects to focus on the root cause of subgrade failures. How these projects are planned and executed will be discussed.