Future from Page 4
tract with the Federal Railroad Administration and is a subsidiary of the Association of American Railroads; contracts with railroad and railroad-related companies.
“ The rail industry wants to be known as safe, reliable and efficient,” said President Lisa Stabler, a former BNSF Railway Executive.“ Those are the things that our strategic research is really focused on – improving safety for the railroad industry, making certain we are a reliable industry and that our products last, delivering on time every time, and being the most costefficient solution for shipping from point A to point B.”
Meaningful work
TTCI’ s work impacts how well U. S. railroads move about their systems safely. In 2012, the railroad industry recorded the safest year recorded, with only 2.30 train accidents per million train miles, an 80 percent improvement from 1980. Train accidents have dropped 51 percent since 1990 and 44 percent since 2000.
Shortline railroads benefit both directly and indirectly from developments in the areas of equipment improvements; wayside detectors; and the design and life-cycle performance of bridges, track components and track maintenance, said Stabler.
TTCI, framed by snowcapped mountains, operates with a vast array of specialized laboratories and track. The company enables isolated testing for all categories of freight and passenger rolling stock, vehicle and track components, and safety devices. Five test tracks are part of 48 miles of rail sprawling across the site, which has been built and maintained just like the track structures at shortlines and Class Is.
Specialized tracks are used to evaluate vehicle stability, safety, endurance and reliability for diesel and electrified power, or to test railcar performance on tight curves. The precision test track allows rolling stock to be tested on various track conditions that represent the extremes sometimes found in revenue service.
“ We can modify the track to be able to show various extreme conditions,”
Stabler said.“ That’ s the whole purpose of that track – it will not be the best track in the world, but represent the limits of what you can find. We can change the conditions as needed for testing.”
TTCI regularly monitors a pair of retired bridges that show the signs of more than 160 years of combined service, to study how the infrastructure lifecan be extended. The stressed bridges are located on High Tonnage Loop, home to TTCI’ s Facility for Accelerated Service Testings( FAST). Using a 17,000-ton train with each car loaded to 315,000 pounds, FAST generates up to 25 million gross tons per month on the High Tonnage Loop.
Safety and reliability
Stabler says that extending the life of bridges or any other piece of track infrastructure could save a shortline or Class I millions in unnecessary replacement costs.
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“ We can look at how existing cracks develop, how they change over time, and remediate them using new methods to determine how the repair will affect bridge life,” she said.“ Can we make a repair that allows us to safely extend the life of the bridge? We can monitor that out here in real time.”
TTCI played a role in the new M- 976 truck design, which has proven to be a friend of car-maintenance shops and budgets. This freight car truck was designed to provide better steering through curves, which proved true during testing. A review by TTCIalso revealed that the improved steering reduced the rate of high-impact wheel generation by a factor of four. Freight car owners with M-976 trucks are benefitting because wheel life is extended, necessitating fewer replacements.
Study results demonstrate why railroads can benefit from TTCI, said Stabler, whether it is putting wheels, rail or an old bridge under the microscope.
“ If you look at our role, it’ s safety, reliability and efficiency,” she said.“ We want to make sure we can not only extend the life of rolling stock and track infrastructure, but safely is the top priority. If we can avoid millions of dollars in repairs to replace a bridge because we have a bridge that is still safe and reliable, then that’ s to the benefit of the industry and to the overall North American economy.”