It is not unusual for an insured to own a private railroad siding or turnout as part of their industrial operation. Freight cars are typi cally shuttled by a railroad company onto the insured's siding for loading and hauling of product for customers. Occasionally, sub stantial property losses occur from derailments on the insured's tracks during routine movement of railcars. Figure 1 shows such a loss site where a derailment cost hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to the siding, roadbed, switch gear and switch.


Figure 1

There was also a claim from the railroad company for repair of the locomotive and rolling stock. This implied that the insured's track caused the derailment; a common assertion by the railroad. How ever, inspection of the railcar wheels, which are property of the railroad, told a different story as to cause.


Figure 2

Figure 2 is a view of one of the wheel flanges on the lead car that started the derailment. The flange was badly worn and out of speci fication. Figure 3 is a view of a wheel flange which is more rounded on the inner surface and within specification. The problem with worn flanges like that in Figure 2 is that the wheel will tend to climb over a switch point rather than be directed onto the insured's siding. In this case, the lead car derailed by climbing over the switch point. Sharp, worn flanges have a tendency to cut into the rail and lift off the rail, causing a derailment.


Figure 3


Figure 4

Figure 4 shows the comparison between an acceptable railroad car wheel flange (left) and a worn flange (right). Wheel gauges are used by railroad personnel to check the acceptability of railroad car wheels. The gauge is placed over the flange and indicates mini mum dimensions for flange width. Figure 5 is a view of a typical wheel wear gauge.


Figure 5

As illustrated in this case, not all derailments are caused by defi ciencies in the private owner's siding and may instead be caused by defective railroad rolling stock. Removal of worn out equip ment is the responsibility of the railroad during regular mainte nance inspections, using various tools including the wear gauge of Figure 5. The claims analyst is often at the mercy of the insured as to notification of the loss. Some insured's notify the claims de partment several days after the date of loss. This allows rail cars that were involved in an accident to be reabsorbed into the railroad system making them difficult to track and photograph. Luckily, the insured promptly notified claims personnel and the inspection and photographs of Figure 2 were obtained, which had a significant bearing on establishing the cause of the loss.

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