Reducing Wheel Climb at Switch Points to Reduce Derailments

TRB’s Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Safety Programs Project 23: Reducing Wheel Climb at Switch Points to Reduce Derailments presents survey results and an engineering analysis of international maintenance practices for reducing risk of wheel climb at switch points, and describes the potential application of these practices for U.S. freight and passenger railways. As a result of the study, the project developed and evaluated a series of hand held gauges modified to reflect U.S. conditions and practices to measure various switch point wear conditions.