Railroad Repairing

Railroad Repairing

Federal Wage System Position

Work Performed

This standard covers the nonsupervisory work involved in installing, removing, aligning, maintaining, and repairing rails, ties, ballast, switches, frogs, joints and other parts of railroad tracks and roadbeds using hand operated power tools and other manually operated equipment. The work requires a knowledge of the layout and maintenance requirements of tracks, roadbeds, and their parts, and ability to find and repair defects in them using specialized railroad maintenance equipment.

Skill and Knowledge Requirements

: Grade 8 repairers, in accomplishing the work described above, use all of the skill and knowledge described at the Grade 5 level and, in addition, the following: -- Ability to determine the need for any of the full range of manual maintenance, including aligning, superelevating, surfacing, shaping, renewing, replacing, and repairing all railroad track parts; must know the proper condition of all track and railway components including drainage and vegetation control requirements and the operation of mechanical switches, signals, and gates; -- Ability to detect probable causes of defects requiring overly frequent maintenance on some track areas; e.g., improper elevation of the outer rail as the cause of frequent shifting of track; -- Ability to determine extent of repair necessary because of defects such as various types of fissures, splits, crushed or flattened heads, cracked bases, shelly spots and other fractures, overly-tight clearances, shifting track, and worn switch points; -- Ability to coordinate repair work with railroad maintenance vehicle operators, welders, crane operators, railroad repairers, and laborers, as required, along with skill in the use of full range of normal repair techniques involved in major repair projects such as tie and track replacement for an entire installation; -- Skill in using the tools, devices, and techniques described at grade 5 and, in addition, using a spot board to determine smoothness, using the string lining technique for determining proper curvature on simple curves, or using comparable techniques in addition to making visual assessments of track condition.

Physical Effort

at this level is essentially the same as those described for the

Working Conditions

at this level are essentially the same as those described for the