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Technical Reports

PTC Radio Frequency Network Design for Dense Urban Areas

In 2013, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) funded Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) to develop full designs of the 220 MHz Positive Train Control (PTC) radio frequency (RF) network for the dense urban areas (DUA) of Chicago, Kansas City (KC) and Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW). FRA...

Unmanned Aircraft System Applications in International Railroads

This report summarizes the current uses and issues associated with Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in railroad applications, and provides the use cases employed by railroads. The report highlights global UAS market outlooks as well as regulations that influence the use of this technology around...

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Trackbed Moisture Sensor System

In this initial phase, conducted from March 2015 through December 2016, Vista Clara and its subcontractor Zetica Rail successfully developed and tested a man-portable, non-invasive spot-check nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) moisture sensor that directly measured moisture on water content in...

Measurement of Wheel Load Environment of a Standard 3-piece Truck

To increase the understanding of the conditions under which wheel rolling contact fatigue (RCF) damage accumulates, wheel load environment data was collected from a car running in revenue service and analyzed to assess the predicted wheel RCF damage using shakedown theory. The car used for the...