Planning for and Responding to Weather

Abstract

For 150 years, American railroads have pursued numerous actions to address the challenges of weather. These have involved development of equipment and construction of operational facilities, collectively designed to minimize weather problems. In preparation for weather events of both a routine and extreme nature, railroads now rely on a combination of federal safety guidance, their own guidelines and standard operating procedures, plus weather forecast guidance provided by public and private meteorological services. Considerable attention is given to monitoring track and roadbed conditions using remote sensing (Fig. 5.1) and visual observations (Fig. 5.2).