Washington — The Federal Railroad Administration has issued a safety advisory to railroads and rail staff concerning a lately recognized interface design issue that relates to how Positive Train Control systems interface with locomotive and cab automobile braking systems.
PTC systems are emergency slowing and stopping mechanisms designed to assist forestall practice crashes and derailments brought on by human error.
In accordance to a discover printed within the Sept. 2 Federal Register, the issue permits a practice crew member to circumvent a PTC enforcement by manually slicing out the pilot valve/brake stand – identified generally because the cutout valve – earlier than the PTC system initiates the brakes.
“This interface design issue poses a significant safety risk by allowing a PTC system to be disabled and unable to initiate the brakes to prevent a train-to-train collision, over-speed derailment, incursion into an established work zone or the movement of a train through a switch left in the wrong position,” the discover states.
Railroads ought to instantly remind crew members that circumventing a PTC enforcement is topic to civil penalty or disqualification for the locomotive engineer/conductor accountable. FRA additionally encourages railroads to:
- Audit the designs of PTC systems applied on all sorts of locomotives and cab vehicles.
- Assess the extent to which a PTC system’s design could be circumvented by a crew member.
- Develop and implement a plan to mitigate and/or appropriate the design issue.
- Present FRA with a schedule for completion of the recognized actions.