After riding a G Train in the MTA's new image, I hopped off at the Smith-9th Streets Station in the hope of perhaps finding another new-scheme train heading south. Seconds after getting set up, I noticed something with a lot of blue heading my way and, for a brief moment, thought, "That was fortunate! I didn’t expect one in the new scheme so quickly." I was, of course, wrong. But what was approaching was perhaps even better, as it was one of the MTA's four Track Inspection Cars, in this case GTC4.
This two-unit car is, actually, a Track Geometry Car used to test several parameters of the track geometry with minimal obstruction of normal railroad operations. Making sure all 659 miles of the New York City subway system's tracks are in good working order is a massive task. For most of the subway system's 111-year history, that job fell entirely to human inspectors. "Trackwalkers," as their name implies, walked the length of the rails while trains were operating, visually surveying them for damage. The MTA still conducts human inspections twice a week, as it has since 2006. But it also has the benefit of technology with these track geometry cars.
These specialized train cars, delivered in 2015, are equipped with a variety of lights, sensors, and cameras designed to measure the condition of the rails and spot any defects before they cause accidents. The cars pay special attention to track gauge, the distance between the two running rails that can fluctuate and cause derailments. Onboard the diagnostic train, a small staff of engineers reviews the data gathered by the system in real time with the help of 30 onboard computers. The MTA's geometry car system is manufactured by Plasser American in Chesapeake VA. A 2013 Federal Transit Administration study of the system found that TGCs outperformed human trackwalkers in accuracy and total number of defects uncovered. The study also reveals lots of detail about what the geometry car sees and how it presents data, including a combination of video captures and numeric data in spreadsheets. The MTA has four-track geometry cars running constant inspections. Yet because the subway system is so large, each can cover each length of track only six times per year. (Brooklyn, New York – May 12, 2021)
Not
just heritage schemes, not just commemorative schemes - this album is devoted to some of the world's most interesting paint schemes, past or present.
