Thursday 28 August 2014

Issues Facing Railroad Track Maintenance

By Harriet Porter


Maintenance in this case can be described as the daily upkeep of a railway to ensure its success in meeting the transport needs of the people. This includes monitoring and repair of railway infrastructure such as the power supply, lights and the tracks. This is important so as to curb the incidence of accidents and other unfortunate events. Railroad track maintenance is important in ensuring the transportation systems run without interruptions.

Railway works can be quite noisy and disruptive to surrounding areas especially if they are residential. Therefore, it is imperative to ensure that a range of measures are put in place to minimize this. Some of these means are general such as sensitizing employees and contractors to be considerate towards the locals near the railway; having generators and lighting far from houses and where applicable, using licensed tools.

The engineering crew should also try to give notice to local people at least 10 days prior maintenance works begin. The local authorities should also be notified and other information about such projects be distributed to the local people where necessary.

Letters are a great tool that could be used to spread the news that a maintenance drill will be due in some day time. The media is also a good way to do this. The objective of this is to give the specifics of the project to the people so that they can plan on how to deal with the situation in the coming days. It may also be recommendable that these letters be circulated to the appropriate local government authorities to avoid trouble during the works.

Although this may seem ideal, it may not always be possible because maintenance is an everyday activity. Therefore it may deem impractical to inform everyone that will be affected by the maintenance activity, especially when in an emergency case scenario. As such, it is also up to the locals near railway roads to be prepared for such occurrences.

This is even worse when you consider that most of the repair and maintenance drills take place at night and on weekends. Most countries actually make it a law that railway repairs take place when they are closed. This has made living along railways a big problem.

Trains function around the clock. It is therefore difficult to plan on maintenance schedules. Especially when there are countless miles of track, crossings and bridges. The railway facility has to be well maintained throughout the year to make sure that travelling needs are not compromised and to ensure the safety of the passengers.

These maintenance and engineering projects also have to be planned months ahead between the train and freight operating firms. Such projects are usually a smaller part of a bigger and more complex work programme. Small alterations could affect all the other parts.There is also a huge work load on the few available maintenance and engineering staff. It is therefore difficult to have work done smoothly and quickly. The same staff tend to have a hard time covering large track distances at different consecutive shifts. To curb the situation, more labor is recommended.




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