Talgo Inc. is a company with experience in maintenance of railway vehicles in the USA, with innovative maintenance programs that have consistently provided availability rates in excess of 99%. The results in North America are in line with those of other maintenance operations in the Group. This level of service is achieved thanks to the more than 55 years of experience and know-how transferred by its parent company Patentes Talgo, S.A. Spanish company whose core business is the design, manufacturing and maintenance of passenger cars and locomotives, with maintenance operations in Spain, Germany, Kazakhstan and the USA.

Talgo’s quality mission statement is to be the leading company in the American railway sector and recognized worldwide for innovation, technology, quality, reliability, safety, and added value of our products and services. A passion for technological development, the commitment and professionalism of our human resources and the constant devotion to customer service are the basis of our business culture.

The quality management system is based on a multi-tiered approach. Talgo’s quality assurance manual contains a description of how the system shall be implemented. The system is comprised of the quality manual, operating procedures, work instructions and quality records.

The site operation managers substantiate Talgo’s commitment to the development and improvement of the quality system by providing the records of:

• Training of each employee in quality and expected workmanship
• Training of each employee in regulatory and customer requirements
• Ensuring that all departments follow guidelines and comply with quality standards by assigning auditors to check compliance
• Development and implementation of corrective and preventive action
• Submittal of the Quality Assurance manual and all detailed plans for approval from the agency.
• Submittal of all required reports per contract.

A quality / Safety / Environmental process manager is assigned to and reports directly to the site operations manager, this position will be responsible for:

• ISO compliance
• Service quality at all locations
• Internal auditing of processes
• Inspection of critical processes and train parts
• Document control of all procedures
• Tool calibration
• Development of a Master Test and Inspection Plan
• Supplier Quality
• Development of the Product realization plan
• Liaison between quality and the customer on quality issues
• Coordinate required training, based on audits with the training department
• Perform statistical analysis for performance and recommend actions to be taken
• Customer feedback and complaints

The Federal Railroad Association (FRA) has quality requirements related to using qualified maintenance technicians to complete various tasks. Talgo has managed a training program and kept our team FRA certified to meet CFR 238.109.

The Quality organization will be responsible for storing records, such as completed maintenance work orders, training certifications, and OSHA inspection documents, federal forms and any other operational contract related documents.

Fleet Maintenance (Talgo’s Approach To Accomplishing Maintenance)
Talgo has spent many years refining its maintenance plan. We look at a maintenance plan as a combination of the following items:

• Preventative maintenance
• Cleaning services
• Predictive maintenance
• Corrective maintenance
• Off-site maintenance
• Record keeping
• Back-shop repair
• Overhauls and Modifications
• Incident response
• Wreck repair

The following sub-sections will summarize Talgo’s strategy in the areas that encompass our definition of a rail equipment maintenance plan.

Preventive Maintenance Plan Related To The Scope of Work
Talgo will use its current philosophy of staggering preventive maintenance on the SFRTA fleet across the periods of predetermined regulatory requirements (i.e 92 Day, 184 Day, 368 Day etc.). This philosophy allows Talgo to minimize the time out of service and spare fleet requirements. This strategy becomes more challenging for larger locomotive overhauls, but will be utilized as much as possible to minimize long-term out of service overhauls. Our strategy will also focus on minimizing train consist changes and keep the teams on value added maintenance activities. Talgo believes that changing the makeup of trainsets can reduce reliability. Our evaluation of the existing schedule will ensure that the schedule windows and staff required for larger work packages are opened. We will examine any backlog of equipment or bottleneck areas, which may result in a delay of any kind.

Scheduling the various work orders is critical with a staggered maintenance program, because the quantity of work-orders in the shop will increase and many of the work orders will need to be completed on schedule per regulatory requirements. Talgo utilizes a maintenance management system (Maximo) for this scheduling activity. Work orders are released with a look-ahead period and the maintenance group manages this backlog on a daily basis.

Cleaning Services
Talgo has a similar approach to cleaning services as we do to maintenance services. The company believes cleaning is an important part of the process and highly noticeable to the passenger. Talgo’s approach to cleaning covers three primary areas. First, the daily equipment cleaning in the maintenance facility is planned and scheduled using the scope of work. Daily cleaning will be completed to a "class B" level, which is above and beyond the requirements. Talgo requires cleaners to utilize and complete check sheets with all of the cleaning requirements. These check sheets are turned into supervisors approximately one hour before end of shift and random inspections will be completed to understand coach cleaning performance and make final improvements before a trainset leaves the facility.

Talgo in some situations use a small staff of daily station cleaners to complete "class A" cleaning in between routes. This team’s primary goal are to remove the larger pieces of garbage from the train and clean up spills or other messes that undoubtedly happen when the trains are in service.

Shown below, is Talgo’s method of measuring interior cleanliness in our Seattle operation. Our quality process manager completes a 100% inspection each month on these items. Adjustments are made in the cleaning process to meet a statistical quality level.

Predictive Maintenance
Talgo’s primary predictive maintenance activities include turning wheel profiles, changing wheels and changing brake pads. Wheel turning needs are based on flange measurements, wheel diameters, and abnormalities on the wheel surface. Talgo measures wheels using more accurate equipment than most of the industry.