The operations of the railcars had two aspects, test run schedules
and daily operations.
Test Runs
Generally were scheduled around a two week cycle of 10 days working
and four days off. The exceptions being in Western Australia. When
the railcar based in the Eastern States (SRS141) travelled over the
transcontinental railway to test the line between Kalgoorlie and Perth
(see WestRail page) the
overall trip took around two weeks straight. The other exception was
the railcar based at Hammersley Iron in North-West of WA (see Hammersley
Iron page). The end to end trip on this line only took a few days,
depending upon the amount of traffic on the line. However, due to
the high tonnage carried on the line test runs had to take place every
couple of weeks.
The general schedule however was from a Tuesday straight through to
the Thursday 10 days later. At the end of each test run the railcar
would be locked up and left at whatever location we finished work.
In theory this gave us four days off, but the the time spend getting
home and then getting "back to work" often meant getting
home sometime Friday and leaving to start back on a Monday evening.
Interestingly the hardest trips were often in our home state of NSW,
if the previous test run finished in a remote location the result
was often an overnight train trip to get home and back to work again.
Interstate trips were less of a problem as the company policy was
to pay for air flights if a trip finished interstate.
Daily Operations
With few exceptions during a test run we worked a twelve hour day,
starting at 6:00 AM and finishing at 6:00 PM. The day would start
with a quick equipment check and a start up of the main propulsion
engine and the testing generator, breakfast if there was time and
the out testing. Actual testing time varied according to the amount
of traffic on the line and could go from sitting in a siding all day,
as happened a few times on the North
Coast Line, to going nearly all day without interruption. More
typically however we would get runs of varying duration during the
day. In between runs there was maintenance to be done - everything
from cleaning floors to engine maintenance and calibrating test equipment.
The railcar was the property of Automation Industries and the Operators,
as company employees were the only ones permitted physically drive
it. Driving was under the direction of various railway personnel,
exactly who varied from state to state. In NSW there was a "Safe
Working Officer" permanently assigned to the railcar who was
responsible for managing its safe operation. However, because the
railcar was classified as a train we also had to have guard whenever
we were operating. In other states typically one person performed
both roles. In addition to the mandatory railway personnel there was
usually a representative from the local track maintenance team, they
were there to report any serious defects found.
Testing
There were two different processes used for testing - electromagnetic
induction and ultra sonics. The diesel electric railcars (SRS140 and
141) used both processes, while the hy-rail bus SRS801 used only ultra
sonics.
The process are probably still patented so I won't go into too much
detail about them. Electromagnetic induction used the principle that
when an electric current passes through a conductor a magnetic field
is created around the conductor. This magnetic field takes the shape
of the conductor. In a sound length of rail the magnetic field would
be the shape of the rail. If there were any faults in the rail they
would cause the magnetic field to distort. Our testing was basically
to continuously electrify short sections of rail and look for distortions
in the magnetic field. This was the original process developed by
Dr Elmer Sperry.
A more recent addition was ultra sonics. Simply this was a sophisticated
form of echo sounding - shooting high frequency sound waves into the
rail and capturing and analysing the echoes that come back. All the
railcars were equipped with a fairly basic, by today's standards,
computer that analysed the signals received from the test systems
and converted the information into visible output in the form of a
printout on paper tapes
There is a picture of SRS140's test carriage below
