Welded Rail and Tank Car Safety Improvement Act - Directs the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to: (1) require each track owner using continuous welded rail (CWR) track to include in the plan filed with the FRA procedures to improve the identification of cracks in rail joint bars; (2) instruct FRA track inspectors to obtain the most recent CWR program of a railroad and require them to use those programs when conducting track inspections; (3) establish a program to review CWR joint bar inspection data from railroads and FRA track inspectors periodically; (4) validate a predictive model to quantify the relevant dynamic forces acting on railroad tank cars under accident conditions; and (5) initiate a rulemaking to develop and implement appropriate design standards for pressurized tank cars.
Requires the FRA to: (1) conduct a comprehensive analysis to determine the impact resistance of the steels in the shells of pressure tank cars constructed before 1989; and (2) establish a program to rank the cars according to their risk of catastrophic fracture and separation, and implement measures to eliminate or mitigate such risk.
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