State of the Art in Wheel/Rail Control: Highlights of the 1999 International Heavy Haul Specialist Technical Session

摘要

The 1999 specialist technical session on wheel/rail control sponsored by the International Heavy Haul Association held in Moscow, Russia covered many aspects of practices used by bulk haul railways around the world to control wheel and rail wear and vehicle and track dynamic interaction. This paper discusses the author's impression of the emerging "best practice" that was reflected in the papers and discussion at this conference. World class heavy haul railways are characterized by impressively low fuel consumption, long wheel lives and low rail renewals. Some of the common features of emerging best practice discussed are preventive rail profile grinding to conformal profiles, limits on wheel tread hollowing, wheel impact detectors, harder, clean rail steels rolled to an 8 in. headradius, high cant tieplates, positive restraint fastenings, spring or swing nose frogs, tangential geometry turnouts with integral baseplates, engineered track transitions, lubrication management and steerable trucks on cars and locomotives.