The researchers express their gratitude to the Association of American Railroads, Dr. Duane Otter, principal engineer at its Transportation Technology Center, Inc., and Mr. Bill Riehl, director of structures for Rail America for extensive assistance in seeking interested railroad owners with potential sites for field investigation of the shear spiking technique. Mr. Tomasz Gawronski, director o...

historic preservation. resulted in the D&RG abandoning the goal of building south to El Paso and focusing instead on building west to the mining camps of Leadville, Colorado, and the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado.4 In 1879 reconnaissance surveying was conducted, and contracts were let for the construction of the San Juan Extension. By April 1880 service was extended from Alamosa, Col...

The number of railroad events reported to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's Hazardous Substances Emergency Events Surveillance system increased from 84 in 1993 to 177 in 1998. Comparisons of data on railroad and non-railroad events were made. The results overall indicated a greater potential impact of railroad events on public health. A median number of 2039 persons were li...

In the paper, the ultrasonic sensor checking device union PLC communication function was introduced, which was applied to anti-collision protect system of multiple bridge cranes stride over the same rack in the railroad service workshop. The hardware and software system were designed which could communicate directly between FX2N series PLC and FREQROL series frequency transformers. PLC uses FX2...

Railroad trespassers are persons on railroad property whose presence is prohibited or unlawful. Most trespassers are walking along or across railroad tracks. In 1997, fatalities to railroad trespassers became the leading cause of railroad-related deaths in the United States. In 1998, 513 persons were injured and 536 persons were killed while trespassing (Federal Railroad Administration, unpubli...

There are situations where a system in mind needs to be tested before it is built. Using modeling and simulation users can apply realistic interactions with their synthetic environments representing real world. In this study, the synthetic environment is a hardware railroad model representing a miniature of the actual size railroad. Simulation software, used to test the railroad system, consist...

The railroad industry was substantially deregulated by the Staggers Act in 1980. While railroad rates, as measured by industry-wide revenue per ton-mile, declined since that time, it is unclear why rates declined. Changes in commodity mix, length of haul, shipment size, lading weight, equipment ownership, railroad costs, competition from other modes, and demand for railroad transportation have ...