A tank car's qualification file, assembled from your shop records and marked where a record is missing.

A qualification leaves records in several hands: visual inspection sheets, nondestructive test reports, thickness readings, service equipment and pressure relief test records, lining results, a leak test after reassembly, and the work order showing what got repaired along the way. Someone ties them to one car, checks them against what that car's program calls for, and prepares the written report before the qualified person signs and the stencil goes on.

In the test, AI reads copies of those records for cars you already finished and assembles a draft qualification file against the federal rule's own list: car identification, each inspection and test by name, date and result exactly as recorded, the stenciling fields the records support, and what it looked for and could not find. It never says a result is acceptable.

The report has eight items, and one of them is a signature. 49 CFR 180.517(b) calls for the type of each inspection and test, a checklist being acceptable; the result of each; the reporting mark and number; the tank car specification; the date by month and year; the location and description of each defect found with the method used to repair it; the facility's name and address with the inspector's name and signature; and the unique code that identifies the facility, its station stencil. It can be kept electronically, but it has to come out in common readable form if FRA asks. The draft fills those items from your records and leaves the signature blank.

One car can hold dates from several shops. Section 180.509 says all qualification requirements need not be done at the same time or at the same facility. The qualification table in Section 180.503 splits the work into the tank's visual, structural integrity, thickness and safety system items, then service equipment and any coating or lining, and the frequency table in Section 180.509 adds a leakage pressure test after reassembly. A car can come through for one of those with another done elsewhere, so the draft lists each item with its date and facility and names any it can't find.

Results carry the method's name. Structural work on the listed welds uses one or more of dye penetrant, radiographic, magnetic particle, ultrasonic, or direct, remote or enhanced visual methods. Section 179.7 expects only people qualified for a given nondestructive test to run it, and periodic calibration of test equipment. The draft copies the method and result as written and notes where the file shows no technician or calibration reference. It never reads a film or a thickness trace.

Not every reading is a qualification. Under Section 180.509, where a material corrosive to the tank has reached it at a localized lining repair, the thickness check in that spot is not a qualification event and needs no stencil change. A lining's inspection interval comes from its owner's service history for that lining and commodity, and your facility follows that owner's test method and acceptance criteria. So a lining date can answer to a different document from the rest of the car, and the draft says which one it relied on. Fields such as required minimum thickness and condemning limit stay as your records show them, for a qualified person to compare.

The stencil has its own logic. Section 180.515 has the facility mark the inspection date and next due date under Appendix C of the AAR Specifications for Tank Cars, allows one date where tests share it, and puts consolidated stencil dates ahead of dates moved by an interval adjustment but never restenciled. AAR's Field Guide to Tank Cars, third edition, 2017, explains the panel: the station stencil is an AAR-assigned code for the facility, its lines include service equipment, pressure relief device and interior heaters, and a lining marked PP is for product purity and needs no requalification. The same guide lists AAR's own periodic 88.B.2 truck and coupler inspection and stub sill inspection, which have separate job codes in Field Manual Appendix D, where all qualification costs take why made code TQ. Where a modification changed what the original plate shows, 49 CFR 179.24 adds a variable identification plate. We cite these by title and section, and none of this is legal or engineering advice.

With your reviewer's yes, tank cars finishing qualification over the next 30 days or so get a draft file early enough to chase what is missing.

A qualified person reviews and signs every report, and the stencil goes on the way it does today. Someone on your staff approves each file before it joins your records or reaches a car owner. Another job is its own decision at its own price, and monthly support comes after that.