Investigation of rail corrugations on the Baltimore Metro

Abstract Rail corrugations have been a problem in certain sections of the relatively new Baltimore MTA rail transit system. A study was conducted to define rail corrugation initiation and growth processes on the system so that construction specifications for new trackage could be modified to reduce corrugations. The study included a literature review, experiments with both trackside and on-board instrumentation and analysis by means of computer modeling. Results from these three tasks are reviewed in this paper.