Railroads
The Complexities of Rail Suicide Data
This document highlights the complex nature of rail suicide data collected from international peer-reviewed articles, and from the United States. The purpose of this effort is to identify the types of rail suicide data that exist, and to understand how they can be used to develop and select...
Demonstration of Mechanics-Based Track Geometry Deterioration Models
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) contracted Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) to expand on existing mechanics-based ballast condition forecasting models. This report demonstrates how one of the mechanics-based models performs against field data and makes recommendations for...
Longitudinal Resistance Modeling for Frozen Ballast
On behalf of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) developed a “proof-of-concept” finite element (FE) longitudinal resistance model to simulate a rail break based on historical data. Longitudinal track resistance (fo) is an important parameter...
Spike Loading Environment in Various Wood Tie Fastening Systems
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) contracted with Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) to investigate the spike loading environment in various wood-tie fastening systems. The goal was to understand how dynamic loads are transferred to the spikes in wood-tie fastening systems and...
Evaluation of Engineered-Polymer Composite Tie Performance in Revenue Service
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and the Association of American Railroads (AAR) investigated the in-track performance of engineered-polymer composite (EPC) ties. This report summarizes the results from a revenue service test conducted by the Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI...