If you’re in the engineering department of any transit, passenger or heavy haul railroad, chances are good that you’re periodically gnashing your teeth over problems with interaction between wheel and rail. You are expected to be the Sherlock Holmes of your railroad when wheel/rail-related accidents, transverse defects, wheel and rail breaks, or uneven rail wear occurs, and solve the case as quickly as possible.
Fortunately, help is available at the Wheel-Rail Interaction Conference, to be held in Atlanta May 18-21. Whether you’ve been a railroader for one year or forty years, WRI has something for folks from operations, mechanical, and maintenance-of-way.
Mike McGinley, Senior Track Engineer for Advanced Rail Management, whose long career in railroad engineering, maintenance and operations includes 21 years with Southern Pacific, and 14 years with Metrolink, says he has learned a lot from the conference over the years. “The presentations are very well done, and offer excellent documentation for a variety of issues. One recent conference included an excellent presentation on distributed power vs. all power on the head-end, and the impact of each approach on the rails.”
Mike adds, “there is an unexpected amount of synergy between the transit, passenger, and heavy-haul participants. While each area has its own issues and challenges, there is a surprising amount of crossover. For example, while heavy-haul trains produce rail wear more quickly, the rail wear issues for a commuter rail agency are significant. While the commuter trains are not as heavy, they move 5 to 25 million tons over the rails each year.”
Arthur Clouse, manager of the Automated Track Inspection Program at the Federal Railroad Administration says that the conference presentations, “help the FRA and the railroads find common ground and work together more effectively on a range of issues.” One example is rail seat abrasion on concrete ties, one of Arthur’s areas of expertise. Arthur has the experience to provide a reliable view of the conference – he started his career on the Penn Central in 1974 (where wheels and rails often didn’t interact well), has been a certified track inspector for the state of Illinois, and began his career with the FRA in 1992 in Billings, Mont., moving to Washington, D.C., in 2000.
Kevin Day, Assistant Chief Engineer – Technology, Testing and Standards, with Canadian National, says that there is a collaborative spirit at WRI. “People are there to share what they’ve learned over the years. Having bright and experienced minds in the same room to share ideas and generate best practices in order to minimize incidents is very worthwhile.”
So, if you don’t want wheel-rail interaction on your railroad to turn into wheel-tie interaction or rail-dirt interaction, the WRI conference comes highly recommended.
More information is available at www.wheel-rail-seminars.com.
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