Review - FRA Publishes PTC Safety Advisory – 9-2-21

Today the DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration published a notice of safety advisory in the Federal Register (86 FR 49410-49411) for “Positive Train Control Interface Design Issue With Locomotive and Cab Car Braking Systems”. Safety Advisory 2021-01 was published due to the identification of the availability of a manual bypass of the PTC breaking controls on at least two different PTC systems.

It is easy to imagine circumstances where being able to defeat the PTC’s operation of breaking controls would be necessary. The system to defeat that system should not, however, be readily available to the train crew. Management review of the circumstances needs to be undertaken to ensure that the safety of the train, the crew and the public is protected.

For more details on the problem and FRA required actions, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/fra-publishes-ptc-safety-advisory - subscription required.