http://www.statesman.com/news/local/...ms-352490.html
Larry Kolvoord/AMERICAN-STATESMANEN
Steel railroad ties are generally unpopular with U.S. railroad operators and transit agencies because, among other problems, they contribute to signal failures. And they're significantly more expensive than standard wooden ties.
That didn't deter Capital Metro from buying 65,000 steel ties for $4.5 million and installing 46,000 of them in recent years. Though that process started before the agency decided to build a passenger rail system that would rely on electronic signal equipment, installation of steel ties continued even afterward.
Le Jeune said the steel ties caused problems on the agency's track when they were installed without neoprene insulation, had the wrong clips attaching the rail to a tie or, in one section, had electrical shorts caused by mud splashing on the rails and ties.
Steel ties elsewhere in the U.S. are typically used at yards, where train cars sit idle or go for maintenance, not on the main run of the track. If rail companies put them in main tracks, they tend to be in rural areas where there are no electronic signal systems and few crossing gates.
Not so in Central Texas. Capital Metro has installed the ties throughout its system.
Agency records indicate that Capital Metro bought 32,500 noninsulated steel ties between 2003 and 2006, and 32,560 insulated ties between 2005 and 2008. The agency in August sold about 11,000 noninsulated ties, which they had bought for $59.80 a tie, to NARSTCO and to Acclaim Metals, a Pennsylvania company, for $38 to $41 apiece.
Asked about that sale late last year, Le Jeune said initially that the agency had sold the ties for the same price it paid originally. Capital Metro instead took a $400,000 loss on those ties, according to records.
Le Jeune said he was well aware of wood's dominance in the market, and the potential problem with steel ties, before the agency began buying them in mass in 2003 as part of a $35 million upgrade of an aging and poorly maintained track. But at that time, the few freight trains running on the line were controlled not by electronic track signals but by a radio system in which train engineers simply told dispatchers and each other where they were.
And the agency did not decide until mid-2006 , a year and a half after the election authorizing commuter rail and after most of the steel ties had been purchased, to install a computerized "centralized track control" system that depends on electric current in the rails.
"Wood was sky-high at the time," Le Jeune said, narrowing the price gap between the two types of ties. And the subcontractor running the freight operation at the time for Capital Metro loved steel ties and preferred to replace old wood ties with steel, he said.
"I couldn't give them enough," he said. "That was all they wanted."
Le Jeune said that inside the commuter rail corridor, the agency installed only insulated ties. Outside that central section, northwest toward Marble Falls and east toward Elgin, Le Jeune said that there are many noninsulated ties.
The agency still uses a radio-based track control system for the freight-only sections of its line and needs to use insulated steel ties only in sections where crossing arms are added at intersecting roads.
My opinions:
[1] More expensive isn't always better. CapMetro should have been buying cheaper wood or concrete ties all along.....
[2] CapMetro should have hired an experienced commuter rail operator as soon as possible after the 2004 commuter rail referendum passed.
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