Regulatory Relief for End of Car Cushioning Units

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Railroad Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 215</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FRA-2025-0119]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2130-AD55</RIN> <SUBJECT>Regulatory Relief for End of Car Cushioning Units</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 regulations concerning freight car draft arrangement and end-of-car cushioning units (EOCCs) to make regulatory relief now provided by waiver permanent. The amendments would allow a freight car to remain in service if the EOCC is operative and equipped with a unit condition indicator (UCI) that indicates a non-discharged EOCC. This change would permit those EOCCs to remain in service despite the presence of clearly formed oil droplets on the unit. The amendments, if finalized, preserve the requirement to repair or replace an EOCC with clearly formed oil droplets if the unit does not have a UCI. </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-2025-0119 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-2025-0119), and Regulatory Identification Number (RIN) for this rulemaking (2130-AD55). 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> Caleb Rogers, Mechanical Engineer, Office of Railroad Safety, at email: <E T="03">caleb.rogers@dot.gov</E> or telephone: 202-579-5198 or Elliott Gillooly, Attorney Adviser, at email: <E T="03">elliott.gillooly@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). Title 49 CFR part 215 establishes railroad freight car safety requirements. Some of the requirements contained in part 215 can be updated to reduce burdens, make technical or conforming changes, or otherwise adjust to advancing technology without any adverse effect on railroad safety. FRA proposes in this NPRM to address a request from the Association of American Railroads (AAR) to incorporate regulatory relief now granted through an FRA waiver into part 215 by allowing freight cars with an EOCC that has leaked clearly formed droplets to remain in service if the cushioning unit is otherwise operational and equipped with a UCI that shows the unit has adequate pressure despite the presence of leaked oil on the exterior of the unit. An EOCC is a device installed on the ends of railroad freight cars designed to absorb shocks and forces during rail operations (similar to shock absorbers on motor vehicles). These units are designed to absorb energy from buff and draft forces and impacts, preventing cargo from shifting and damage to the freight car draft system that could lead to a derailment. An EOCC must contain sufficient oil for the unit to function as designed ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> for the unit adequately to absorb energy from in-train forces and potential impacts). Accordingly, FRA's Railroad Freight Car Safety Standards, 49 CFR part 215, prohibit a rail car from continuing in service if its EOCC is broken or inoperative (§ 215.129), which is a requirement that FRA does not intend to remove. Instead, FRA is proposing to remove § 215.127(c), which contains the prohibition that a freight car cannot continue in service if the EOCC is leaking “clearly formed droplets,” even though the EOCC may still be operational. FRA will also make conforming changes to § 215.129 as detailed in the Section-by-Section Analysis, below, to address the difference between EOCCs that have a UCI and those that do not. UCIs are devices that railroad employees can use to monitor the condition of EOCCs. Insufficient internal pressure can be detected when a button on the UCI is pressed. If there is insufficient pressure in the EOCC, the button will remain depressed. Accordingly, in 2013, FRA granted AAR member railroads relief from § 215.127(c)(1) if a railroad freight car's cushioning unit is equipped with a UCI that indicates the unit is not defective. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> This relief prevents railroad employees from having to unnecessarily remove functioning cushioning units that may be leaking clearly formed droplets of oil but are still functioning properly. Cushioning units are heavy and require freight cars to be jacked to be removed, and as such, the process presents inherent safety risks to railroad employees. The use of UCIs has allowed railroads to avoid unnecessary repairs of functioning cushioning units. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  See Docket No. FRA-2013-0077, available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> </FTNT> Since issuance of this waiver, AAR member railroads have seen a significant decrease in the number of cars that must be removed from service because the cushioning unit was identified as leaking. At the same time, the number of cars removed from service because the UCI indicates the cushioning unit is defective has increased. An industry standard (AAR Field Manual Rule 59) governs the use of UCIs to determine whether cushioning units are safe and acceptable for continued service. Using this standard (and as older cushioning units without UCIs age out of service), the number of cars removed from service because of leakage will continue to decline. FRA is proposing to incorporate the terms of the waiver into the Freight Car Safety Standards as follows. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Section-by-Section Analysis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 215.127 Defective Draft Arrangement</HD> Section 215.127 addresses various components making up the draft arrangement of a freight car. If any of those components are missing or inoperative, the freight car cannot be safely used in service. As stated above, the prohibition on continuing a freight car in service with an inoperative EOCC is being preserved, but it would be moved to § 215.129. Concurrently, FRA proposes to clarify in § 215.129 that an EOCC leaking clearly formed droplets is a condition requiring a car to be held out of service only when the EOCC is not equipped with a UCI. If the car is equipped with a UCI, railroads should rely on it instead of the formation of oil droplets to determine the condition of the EOCC. Under excessive loading conditions and pressures, some fluid may seep past the unit's seal, with the seepage accumulating and forming “clearly formed droplets.” That seepage serves to relieve pressure within the EOCC but does not necessarily mean that the EOCC is not functioning properly. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Section 215.129 Defective Cushioning Device</HD> Section 215.129 currently states that a railroad may not place or continue in service a car if it has an EOCC that is broken, inoperative, or missing a part. To incorporate the relief described above, FRA is proposing to add that a car also cannot be placed or continued in service if the EOCC is leaking clearly formed droplets and not equipped with a UCI, or if it is equipped with a UCI that indicates a discharged cushioning unit. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Regulatory Impact and Notices</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Executive Order (E.O.) 12866 (Regulatory Planning and Review) and DOT Regulatory Policies and Procedures</HD> FRA has considered the impact of this NPRM under E.O. 12866 (58 FR 51735, Oct. 4, 1993), Regulatory Planning and Review, and DOT Regulatory Policies and Procedures. The Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs determined that this NPRM is not a significant regulatory action under section 3(f) of E.O. 12866. FRA analyzed the potential costs and benefits of this proposed rule. Railroads would benefit from this regulatory relief because they would not be obligated to withhold cars from service based solely on the presence of oil on the exterior of an EOCC. This would reduce costs associated with those freight cars equipped with a UCI that have safe and operational EOCCs by eliminating unnecessary downtime and unnecessary replacement of EOCCs that still have a useful service life. In addition, railroads or their industry association would no longer be required to submit periodic, repetitive waiver requests related to the current regulatory requirement. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. E.O. 14192 (Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation)</HD> E.O. 14192 (90 FR 9065, Jan. 31, 2025), Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation, requires that for “each new [E.O. 14192 regulatory action] issued, at least ten prior regulations be identified for elimination.”  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Implementation guidance for E.O. 14192 issued by OMB (Memorandum M-25-20, Mar. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━