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The Federal Railroad Administration requested the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center to assess ten sites in depth that
used the Traffic Separation Study (TSS) process. The assessment involved a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the impact of
the process used at each site and an...
The Federal Railroad Administration requested the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT’s) Volpe National Transportation
Systems Center (Volpe Center) to assess the Traffic Separation Study (TSS) process developed by the North Carolina Department
of Transportation’s (NCDOT’s) Rail Division, to...
This report presents the results of phase 2 of the project “On-line high-speed rail defect detection” aimed at improving the reliability and the speed of current defect detection in rails. Ultrasonic guided waves, traveling in the rail running direction, were examined for this task. The advantages...
This report covers the theoretical development of the safety state model for railroad operations. Using data from a train control technology experiment, experimental application of the model is demonstrated.
A stochastic model of system behavior is developed which is used to estimate the dynamic...
This report describes a study evaluating the effects of train control technology on locomotive engineer performance. Several types of train control systems were evaluated: partial automation (cruise control and programmed stop) and full automation were compared to manual train control. The study...
Forty-two fiberglass fabric wrapped, solid-sawn wood ties during 300 million gross tons (MGT) of heavy axle load (HAL) traffic and eight fiberglass fabric wrapped ties with metal cover plates were recently evaluated during 125 MGT of HAL traffic at the Transportation Technology Center in Pueblo,...
This report presents the results of the first three phases of a multiphase project to adapt Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to railroads for use in developing useful indices of substructure condition and performance. Included are brief discussions of some basic GPR principles, as well as data...