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The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) conducted a side impact test of a surrogate DOT-113 tank car at Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) to evaluate its performance under dynamic impact conditions and to provide data for the verification and refinement of a computational model....
Legacy locomotives, such as narrow-nose designs manufactured before 1990, were not required to comply with crashworthiness requirements. Therefore, these locomotives afford less crew protection in case of train collisions. In this project, collision posts that offer additional crash...
On December 18, 2018, a quasi-static raking test of a diesel multiple unit (DMU) fuel tank was conducted at the Transportation Technology Center (TTC) in Pueblo, CO. This test resulted in puncture of the tank's end sheet and a 22.6-inch tear in its bottom sheet. On November 13, 2019, a second...
The primary objective of the project was the evaluation of the braking enforcement methodology used by the railroads that have implemented an E-ATC PTC system. The methodology developed under this project can be used by the industry to verify that the braking enforcement algorithms meet...
Despite tremendous progress in railroad safety over the last 30 years, many safety statistics have plateaued. Thus, additional insights on the complex interaction between people, trains, infrastructure, and the operating environment are needed. While the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)...
This research documents lessons learned from the development of the Railroad Information Sharing Environment (RISE), a voluntary partnership for sharing safety sensitive information among multiple railroad industry stakeholders for the purpose of identifying, evaluating, and managing safety...
The Federal Railroad Administration, in collaboration with the Association of American Railroads and project coordinator Transportation Technology Center, Inc., has sponsored a revenue service test of an automated, machine vision inspection system for evaluating truck components on railcars. The...
On November 19, 2019, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) contracted Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) to conduct a side impact test of the DOT-113C120W (DOT-113) cryogenic tank car to evaluate the performance of the tank car and to provide data for the verification and...
As part of the Federal Railroad Administration’s locomotive cab occupant protection research, a Secondary Impact Protection System (SIPS) for locomotive engineers was developed. The system uses an automotive-style passenger airbag and a deformable knee bolster to provide the desired protection...
This report discusses the development of prototype Electrically Driven Hand Brakes (EDHB) that provide remote automatic set and release functions from push buttons mounted on the side of a car, or wirelessly. The EDHB improves the safety of railroad operations in several ways, including making...