An official website of the United States government
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Researchers developed a second-generation RAdar Ballast Inspection Tool (RABIT) based on ground-penetrating radar (GPR) for use by track inspectors. This system is much lighter (26 lbs/11.8 kg) than its predecessor and is portable. It has a single bi-static antenna pair that straddles the tie,...
This report documents the results of a study of railroad voice communications from three large (Class I) freight railroad dispatch centers. The purpose of the research was to gain an understanding of the types of information that are exchanged between railroad personnel and to determine the...
This report is a follow on of the first phase of a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)-sponsored project to evaluate lateral ballast behavior and how mechanics-based track geometry deterioration models forecast field behavior. In Phase II of the project, Transportation Technology Center, Inc....
The U.S. railroad industry is facing critical knowledge loss of invaluable safety leadership expertise due to employee separations and a retiring workforce. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) sponsored TrueSafety Evaluation, LLC, in partnership with Perigean Technologies, to conduct...
Between August 2019 and May 2022, the Federal Railroad Administration sponsored researchers from Rutgers University, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Applied Research Associates, and the University of Houston to develop a risk analysis methodology for railroad transportation of...
This report discusses a comprehensive fatigue and fracture characterization of modern head-hardened rails in reference to legacy rails. The focus is in on detail (i.e., transverse) fracture, the effects of the microstructural gradient in the railhead, and residual stresses caused by head-...
The Federal Railroad Administration sponsored Kansas State University (K-State) in research to improve the design and performance of crossties. K-State used a Creaform HandySCAN 700 3D hand-held scanner to scan the surface of crossties removed from service to a spatial resolution of about 1 mm,...
To address the need to minimize differential movement at railway transitions for joint high-speed passenger and freight routes in the U.S., this research study identified and studied three problematic bridge approaches near Chester, PA, along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor line and another two on...
Researchers developed a second-generation RAdar Ballast Inspection Tool (RABIT) using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) for use by track inspectors. This system is much lighter (26 lbs/11.8 kg) than its predecessor (63 lb/29 kg) and is truly portable. It has a single bi-static antenna pair that...
In the final phase of this research project, a team from Sharma & Associates, Inc. conducted moving train tests on a 228-car, Distributed Power (DP) configured train consist traveling from Minot, ND, to Vancouver, WA, using a Burlington Northern and Santa Fe (BNSF) train and crew. This...