THE HISTORY OF SANTA FE RAIL TESTING AND RAIL TEST CARS/Lowman
IN STOCK AND SHIPPING
At its peak, the Santa Fe system comprised about 11,000 miles of rail stretching from Chicago in the east to Los Angeles in the west, serving 11 states. At the insistence of the U.S. Bureau of Safety following increasing numbers of sudden, sometimes catastrophic, rail failures, America’s railroads, including the Santa Fe, endeavored to develop effective and efficient methods of detecting defects in rail before they caused further problems. In this volume, Santa Fe rail test car veteran W. Brock Lowman chronicles the company’s efforts to develop rail detection equipment, from the early American Railway Association magnetic test cars of the 1920s to Santa Fe’s custom Chevrolet C-20 Suburban Hi-rail vehicles with ultrasonic testing equipment used into the early 1990s. The author also takes the reader through a typical work-day testing rail. An overview of typical rail faults and a primer on ultrasonic testing. Over 130 photos, plus a roster of Santa Fe’s rail testing vehicles.
List price $30.00, softcover, b&w and color photos, 48 pages. SKU: BSFTESTING. Posted June 16, 2013.
