FRA Office of Safety Train on Pan Am

I think I saw that train here in Central Texas roughly a year ago.  At the time, some old wooden bridges were being replaced with new concrete and steel ones between Round Rock and Hutto.

I saw them last month on Metro-North's New Haven Line passing though Mamaroneck, NY coming from the location of the derailment in Bridgeport, CT. of Metro-North-CDOT M8s on May 17th I was told.

From the FRA website:

The Office of Safety owns and operates the DOTX-220 to support its mission to reduce track geometry caused derailments nationwide. The DOTX-220 is a towed vehicle that surveys approximately 40,000 miles of United States mainline railroad each year.

The DOTX-220:
- Entered service in 2007
- Operates in either direction in towed mode
- Is equipped with a track geometry measurement system to measure gage, alignment and track surface
- Is equipped with a vehicle track interaction (VTI) system to measure truck and car body forces in g's
- Is equipped with a differential global positional system to provide high accuracy GPS coordinates to each foot surveyed

One was here in Lafayette early this spring. Cool car to look at.

Thanks everyone.  Nice research, Conrail...I guess I could have looked it up on the internet!!

Bet they are finding a lot of defects knowing Pam Am the way I do but being Ayer that section of track could be under the joint ownership of NS/Pam am which with NS money is in very good shape.