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Canadian Pacific Railway Report
Since Railway Age’s last in-depth look at CPR, the big news on this continent-spanning railway has been that its managers and line employees have worked steadily to mesh a wide range of techniques, technologies, and capacity-building investments to produce, in the words of Executive Vice President Kathryn McQuade, "a railroad that takes as many variables out of the always variable nature of railroading." Consistency of service and steady financial improvement has been the rule at CPR, all done in a workaday fashion that belies the very real advancement the company has made in its objective to be North America’s safest and most fluid transportation system. Even the one headline-making move—purchase of the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern—has been done with a cool, calm, and consultative approach that has paid off with STB approval at a time when acquisitions are proving to be volatile matters for other railroads. But, as the line that defied all the naysayers by completing what was called "the impossible railway" and became the world’s first transcontinental system under one management, few would expect anything less from CPR. What has worked well for CPR for 127 years is working—and being worked—even better today.
Rail welding best practices
Rail welding, whether joining sticks of rail into long strings or filling in gaps left by removing rail flaws, is an invaluable part of m/w. But it can always be made better. Railway Age will be talking to major suppliers and contractors as well as researchers at TTCI to find out what are considered by best practices in rail welding as of late 2008.
Integrating yards with main line control
Too often, it seems as though trains scheduled to move through a classification yard emerge out of what is, in the yardmaster’s eyes, the unknown abyss of the main line. Likewise, trains moving out of the yard go right back into that abyss. It’s a case of the right hand (the main line train dispatcher) not knowing what the left hand (yardmaster or hump tower controller) is doing. Thanks to software-based systems, the yard and the main line can now peacefully co-exist, sharing data and knowledge. There is little reason for a yard to be operating in isolation, without concrete information on what’s coming in and what needs to go out. It makes for better scheduling, improved ontime performance and network velocity, and reduced dwell time.
Standardized transit vehicles: A good idea?
It’s an idea that worked at least once, in 1929 when street railway company executives agreed to a standard President’s Conference Committee (PCC) streetcar. Nearly 5,000 PCCs were built for systems across North America; many were still running as the 21st century began, and a very few still run to this day in revenue service. Now, North American transit properties, themselves growing in number, are wondering whether similar standards could be set for commuter rail, subway, light rail, and streetcar designs. Ironically, those very properties sometimes request novel design specs for their “unique” challenges, upending the supposition. It’s an issue that suppliers, transit operators, and industry consultants acknowledge as legitimate, but problematic.
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