Railway Track & Structures - October 2007 - (Page 48)

TTCI Anniversary The Annual Research Review features an array of top speakers during the first day of the 1.5-day session. terrible accident at Hatfield where rail broke into many pieces because of fatigue damage. We were called in together with an engineering company called ARUP. We were at the head of the exercise digging into the root cause of the problem rail fatigue. Certainly all of us in the industry understand that issue a lot better now. RT&S: Can you give an overview of TTCI today? R.A.: We’re about 220-230 strong and have been for quite a few years now. It’s a pretty stable employee base. We supplement that often by temporary help and by expert consultants under contract. We don’t do all the work on our own, by any means. We have 52 square miles out here on the prairie, and 48 miles of track. As you know, this is federal property, although the land is owned by the State of Colorado and leased long term to the federal government. The site itself is owned by FRA. A brand new maintenance building has been constructed and is now being finished inside. It was funded by FRA’s annual budget over the past four years. When it’s properly finished, it will enable us to be a lot more efficient with our rail-vehicle and locomotive maintenance. We will be able to accommodate five packs of consists without having to split up the consists, which we very often have to do now because our existing maintenance building has a dead end at the back door. Long consists weren’t envisioned back in the 1960s. Another major accomplishment is the emergency response training center. It started off with very modest goals to help railroads train various people for rail incidents. Now it has expanded to the highway incidents, and we’re expanding into the security side of the game, as well. I know your magazine covered the fact that we’re now a member of the National Dometic Preparedness Consortium, along with the original five members of that consortium. That makes us eligible for Department of Homeland Security funding so that students now can be supported with federal funding when they come to take our courses. That should, we expect, provide another quantum leap in the business of the training center. At the moment, everyone who comes out here, or their company, has to pay their own way, not only the cost for tuition, but also the cost for hotel, airfare, food, etc. It’s our understanding that now government grants will 48 Railway Track & Structures October 2007 www.rtands.com http://www.transalert.com http://www.rtands.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Railway Track & Structures - October 2007

Railway Track & Structures - October 2007 Contents On Track Industry Today Supplier News AREMA News NRC News TTCI R&D Crossties by the Billions Provide Essentials for Full Support Modern Tools Manage Risk M/W Challenges: Better Management of Thermal Forces in CWR TTCI Celebrates 25 Years as Facility, 10 as Part of AAR Products and Literature People Calendar Sales Representatives Website Directory Advertisers Index Professional Directory Classified Advertising Chicago Perspective

Railway Track & Structures - October 2007

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