Amendments to Brake System Maintenance and Inspection Requirements

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Railroad Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Parts 229, 232, and 238</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FRA-2025-0130]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2130-AD24</RIN> <SUBJECT>Amendments to Brake System Maintenance and Inspection Requirements</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> FRA proposes to amend its mechanical equipment safety standards related to brake inspections for passenger and freight rail equipment. The proposed changes focus on the incorporation of longstanding waivers for locomotive brake system maintenance and inspection requirements. The amendments are consistent with the mandates of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which require FRA to review and analyze certain longstanding waivers to determine whether incorporating the waivers into FRA's regulations is justified, and the Executive Order for Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President's “Department of Government Efficiency” Deregulatory Initiative. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on the proposed rule must be received by September 2, 2025. FRA may consider comments received after that date, but only to the extent practicable. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Comments:</E> Comments related to Docket No. FRA-2025-0130 may be submitted by going to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and following the online instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency name, docket number (FRA-2025-0130), and Regulatory Identification Number (RIN) for this rulemaking (2130-AD24). All comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov;</E> this includes any personal information. Please see the Privacy Act heading in the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document for Privacy Act information related to any submitted comments or materials. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and follow the online instructions for accessing the docket. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Gary Fairbanks, Supervisory Railroad Safety Specialist, FRA, telephone: (202) 230-9594, email: <E T="03">Gary.Fairbanks@dot.gov;</E> or James Mecone, Attorney Adviser, FRA, telephone: (202) 380-5324, email: <E T="03">James.Mecone@dot.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Consistent with the deregulatory agenda of President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of Transportation Sean P. Duffy, which seeks to unleash America's economic prosperity without compromising transportation safety, FRA is reviewing its regulatory requirements in parts 200 through 299 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Some of the requirements contained in 49 CFR parts 229, 232, and 238 could be updated to reduce burdens, make technical or conforming changes, or otherwise adjust to advancing technology without any adverse effect on railroad safety. The amendments proposed in this NPRM would codify certain waivers to make permanent the safety benefits of these waivers and eliminate uncertainty about potential extensions. The codification of these waivers would also eliminate the need for railroads to submit waiver petitions (and repeated extensions of those waivers every five years) from the various applicable regulations and FRA's review and approval burden for the waiver petitions and extension requests. Please review the Section-by-Section Analysis below for the relevant information related to each proposed change. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Section-by-Section Analysis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HED">PART 229—LOCOMOTIVE SAFETY STANDARDS</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 229.29 Air Brake System Calibration, Maintenance, and Testing</HD> This section currently provides requirements for periodic calibration, maintenance, and testing of locomotive air brake systems. FRA proposes to extend brake equipment service life and maintenance intervals for periodic cleaning, repairing, and testing of air brake equipment, based on extensive industry and FRA experience implementing test waivers. For industry convenience and clarity, FRA also proposes to improve consistency between passenger locomotive standards located in parts 229 and 238, by reorganizing and restating certain requirements. FRA recognizes that some equipment on passenger railroads must comply with both §§ 229.29 and 238.309, which currently require the same brake maintenance, but are expressed differently. FRA's proposal includes editorial changes to match terms and definitions in both parts 229 and 238. FRA proposes to remove existing paragraph (b) of this section and combine its requirements with those in § 232.205(c)(1)(iii) for clarity and ease of reference. As discussed in the analysis of § 232.205(c)(1)(iii) below, FRA is proposing to revise the requirements to account for the use of digital air flow method (AFM) indicators. Part 232 already includes the use of digital AFMs as an acceptable option for conducting a brake test. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Additionally, FRA proposes to remove existing paragraph (g)(1) requiring that the date of AFM indicator calibration be recorded on form FRA F 6180-49A (the blue card). This requirement is already codified at 49 CFR 232.205(c)(1)(iv). <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  § 232.205(c)(1)(ii). </FTNT> With the removal of existing paragraph (b), FRA proposes to redesignate existing paragraph (c) as paragraph (b) and to revise new paragraph (b)(1) to account for the use of electronic air brake (EAB) control valves. This revision effectively codifies a condition of the longstanding waiver in Docket Number FRA-2005-21613. The longstanding waiver in Docket Number FRA-2005-21613 involves locomotive EAB systems manufactured by New York Air Brake (NYAB) (CCB-1, CCB-2, and CCB-26), and Wabtec (EPIC 3102D2, EPIC 2, and FastBrake). Approximately 17,000 locomotives in the U.S. (over half the U.S. locomotive operating fleet) and approximately 70 percent of the Class I operating fleet are equipped with these types of brakes. These brake systems electronically control the pneumatic brakes on freight locomotives. During the course of this waiver, the test committee overseeing implementation of the relief concluded that the periodic inspection period interval for these brake systems could be extended from 1,472 days to 3,680 days. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See https://www.regulations.gov/document/FRA-2005-21613-0129.</E> There are no comments in opposition to the relief in this docket. </FTNT> FRA proposes to redesignate paragraphs (d) as paragraph (c), and to redesignate paragraph (e) as paragraph (c). FRA proposes to revise redesignated paragraph (e) to update the intervals and be consistent with the language in § 238.309(b). First, FRA proposes to revise the reference to “26 L or equivalent brake system” in paragraph (e)(1) to a full listing of all 26 type brake systems and to generally identify those brake systems as “26 type brake systems.” Consistent with that change, FRA proposes to revise the reference to 26 L or equivalent brake systems in paragraph (e)(2) to “26 type brake systems.” FRA proposes to revise redesignated paragraph (e)(3) to remove the references to brake systems subject to longstanding age exploration waivers. FRA proposes to add new paragraphs (e)(4) through (6) to incorporate the results of age exploration waiver in docket number FRA-2005-21613. FRA proposes to add new paragraphs (f) and (g) to incorporate specific conditions of the waiver in docket number FRA-2005-21613. These paragraphs would require maintenance of the critical components of the brake systems designed to control contaminants to ensure the effectiveness of those systems throughout the inspection cycle. Finally, FRA proposes to redesignate paragraph (g) as paragraph (h). Specifically, FRA proposes to redesignate paragraph (g)(2) as paragraph (h)(1), and to redesignate paragraph (g)(3) as paragraph (h)(2) and modify redesignated paragraph (h)(2) with the provision for a unique employee identifier to permit the use of electronic signature of required records. As described above, FRA proposes to remove existing paragraph (g)(1) requiring a record of the AFM indicator calibration date on form FRA F 6180-49A (the blue card) because this requirement is already codified at 49 CFR 232.205(c)(1)(iv). <HD SOURCE="HED">PART 232—BRAKE SYSTEM SAFETY STANDARDS FOR FREIGHT AND OTHER NON-PASSENGER TRAINS AND EQUIPMENT; END-OF-TRAIN DEVICES</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 232.205 Class I Brake Test-Initial Terminal Inspection</HD> As noted above, FRA is proposing to combine the requirements of existing paragraph (b) of § 229.29 with those of paragraph (c)(1)(iii) of this section. Specifically, FRA proposes to revise paragraph (c)(1)(iii) to address the use of digital AFM indicators. The existing regulation governs the use and calibration of standalone analog mechanical AFM indicators, but, recognizing the self-diagnostic capabilities of these digital devices, a longstanding FRA test waiver extended the calibration interval to 184 days. <FTREF/> <SU>3</SU> This has resulted in 98 percent of AFM devices remaining in calibration for each day of the 184-day interval without attention (as compared to 78 percent remaining in calibration prior to the waiver). <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Docket Number FRA-2016-0086. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HED">PART 238—PASSENGER EQUIPMENT SAFETY STANDARDS</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 2 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 46k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━