A critical analysis of grounding practices for railroad tracks in electric utility stations

This analysis looks for common trends of voltages along railroad tracks in a controlled model of a substation grounding system during a ground fault. Several cases are used to illustrate some of the most common techniques used to limit hazardous voltages, and some of these techniques are found to be quite ineffective. Except for cases in which the tracks near the substation were removed, the potential transferred along the tracks produced several scenarios which resulted in touch and/for step voltages exceeding the tolerable limits