North American Railroad Research Articles

Transients, punks and hobos: rethinking the history of train hopping through experimental film

ABSTRACT While in social history and mobilities research, the study of railway mobility is becoming increasingly popular, offering new insights into (trans)national railway cultures, there is less interest in illicit mobility, unconventional modes of travel and non-regulated, irregular patterns of movement, such as train hopping, and the way they function in experimental film. To fill this gap, I build on the recent mobilities literature to discuss two stylistically distinct experimental films, Reading Canada Backwards (Steve Topping, 1995) and Portland (Greta Snider, 1996), which offer a social commentary on train hopping, typically associated with the history and material conditions of North American railway travels. Challenging the larger freighthopping mobilities discourse, both films confront the historical legacy of the hobo, as reimagined by occasional transients and punk drifters, as a product of capitalist enterprise, railroad transportation services and failed bourgeois masculinity. While in narrative and documentary films, hobo culture often emerges as an alternative, intrepid lifestyle and a personal philosophy based on economic or environmental concerns, Reading Canada Backwards and Portland take a more critical and ironic take on riding the rails, highlighting its casual spontaneity, playful creativity and affective potential, which questions the drifter as an active agent of marginal mobility practices.

Evaluating glass fiber reinforced composite sleepers to mitigate elastic fastening system spike fatigue failure: A finite element study

North American railroads have experienced spike fastener fatigue failures due to spike overloading that have led to multiple derailments. Failures have primarily been found in timber sleeper track constructed with elastic fasteners. This is likely because the elastic fasteners change the load path, resulting in spikes becoming a primary component to transfer the longitudinal forces. Mitigation methods to prevent spike overloading have been limited and thus, this novel study seeks an alternative method leveraging engineered composite sleepers to reduce spike stress. This paper first documents and compares typical composite and timber sleeper properties as reported in the literature. Then, this paper describes the development and validation of a single spike-in-sleeper finite element model (FEM) used to investigate the interaction between the composite sleeper and spike. A glass fiber reinforced composite (GFRC) sleeper was selected due to its high elastic modulus and compressive strength reported in the literature. The validated model was used to quantify the effect of these critical material properties on spikes subjected to longitudinal loads. The GFRC’s stiffness and compressive strength values lead to a 30% reduction in the maximum spike stress when compared to spikes installed in timber sleepers. The reduced spike stress in the GFRC fell below the spike’s expected fatigue limit. Finally, this paper provides required compressive strength for given longitudinal loads to ensure the spike stress falls below the fatigue limit in different operating environments. This characterization of required composite sleeper strength properties can be used to advance track system mechanistic-empirical design.

Railway tie deterioration interval estimation with Bayesian deep learning and data-driven maintenance strategy

Wooden railway ties still occupy a significant proportion of the North American railway network. Many existing tie maintenance schemes are performed using expensive field tests. Using tie deterioration prediction to estimate the required tie inventory is a cost-efficient solution for tackling tie maintenance issues. This study proposes an improved multilayer neural network model using Bayesian deep learning (BDL-MLP). Balanced and efficient interval estimation of the tie deterioration rate was achieved by analyzing weather and historical detection datasets. A comprehensive evaluation metric, cover width deviation and error (CWDE), was also proposed to evaluate the result of prediction interval (PI). Using this metric, the CWDE value of the BDL-MLP model reached 0.9324, and the interval coverage rate was 97.50%. Compared with the combined model, the CWDE index increased by 1.48–5.40%, and the interval coverage rate increased by 4.21–22.15%. Finally, a deterioration data-driven maintenance strategy is established based on the quantile regression principle. This method estimates the tie-replacement inventory under different deterioration types, resulting in economical maintenance solutions.

Budget-Constrained Rail Electrification Modeling Using Symmetric Traffic Assignment: A North American Case Study

We consider a budget constrained rail network electrification problem with associated changes in costs of energy usage (via path gradient and curvature), operations, and long-term maintenance. In particular, we consider that freight flows on such a network form a user equilibrium. Interactions between electric and diesel trains on the same corridor are represented with nonseparable link performance functions, which nevertheless have a symmetric Jacobian. This bi-level formulation is solved for the North American railroad network using a genetic algorithm (GA), incorporating domain-specific insights to reduce the number of solutions which must be considered. We analyze solution characteristics and decision-making implications. Results show that broad connectivity would be beneficial for most impact. Increasing demand shifts electrified corridors towards the more populous east and gulf coasts, while increased operational costs results in electrification of routes through mountainous terrains.

Influence of mainline schedule flexibility and volume variability on railway classification yard performance

Single-railcar shipments of freight transported by multiple freight trains and sorted at several classification (marshalling) yards between origin and destination remain an important source of traffic and revenue for North American railways. To aid railroads in making business decisions regarding train operating plans and efficient use of yard capacity, this research investigates the influence of inbound traffic volume variation and schedule flexibility on classification yard performance. Simulation experiments using YardSYM, a discrete-event simulation model developed for hump classification yard analysis, quantify the interaction of these factors through different yard performance metrics. Simulation results suggest increasing schedule flexibility causes classification yard performance to decline while increasing volume variability has a less pronounced effect. For the simulated yard, the combined effect of train arrival time and volume variability increased average railcar dwell by over 3 h, and reduced railcar connections achieved by ten percent. Bunching train departures increased dwell by nearly 2 h and cut on-time train originations in half. To better understand the implications for network performance, additional analysis of the propagation of schedule flexibility and volume variation through classification yards demonstrates how schedule flexibility is amplified and dampened to medium values related to the consistency of the train assembly process.

Quantifying the Relative Influence of Railway Hump Classification Yard Performance Factors

Single-railcar freight shipments that move in multiple freight trains and are sorted at several classification yards between origin and destination remain an important source of traffic and revenue for North American railways. Despite the role of both mainlines and yards in freight rail transportation performance, little attention is devoted to investigations of classification yard performance, and few yard capacity models and tools are available. To address this need, this paper seeks to quantify the relative influence of different factors on several yard performance metrics. Simulation experiments conducted with YardSYM, a discrete-event simulation model developed specifically to analyze hump classification yards, examine varying the volume, number of blocks, block size distribution, number of outbound trains, train departure distribution, train arrival time variability, and arriving block volume variability. In addition to the expected sensitivity of yard performance to railcar throughput volume, the most influential factors change depending on the particular yard performance metric, emphasizing the criticality of matching performance metrics to railroad business objectives. The results of this research serve to screen variables for the future development of multivariable yard performance models and facilitate more informed business decisions regarding yard operating plans that make more efficient and economical use of existing yard capacity.

Integrated inbound train split and load planning in an intermodal railway terminal

In the last decades the intermodal transportation of containers has become a key component of the entire international trade system, as it allows safe and efficient intercontinental door-to-door movement of freight by combining land and sea transportation services. Intermodal railway terminals are special components of these systems that allow container traffic to be consolidated from different sources and to be transported by train over long distances. This paper addresses a practical problem faced by a major North American railway. On a daily basis, terminal operators must make several decisions such as how inbound trains are split into sequences of railcars, on which tracks these railcars are parked for loading and off-loading operations, and how the railcars are assigned to outbound blocks so as to fulfill the demand of each block. We introduce an approach that incorporates all these decisions to obtain improved solutions. In a first step, a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model is used to create a set of patterns that specify how each inbound train is split and how the railcars are assigned to the blocks. Then, in a second step, another MILP formulation decides which patterns to use and where to park the railcars. Tests on generated benchmark instances based on realistic data from the railway indicate that our approach is able to generate good quality solutions for all instances and can be used by the company to assist decision makers in generating less costly and more efficient plans.

Women in North American railroad operational roles: Opportunities and challenges

Leaders in the traditionally male-dominated railroad industry should understand the challenges associated specifically with more women in their workplaces and, perhaps more importantly, gain a clearer understanding of how to attract and retain more female employees. Researchers surveyed employees at two of North America's largest railroads—one in the United States and another in Canada—to anonymously record employees' current attitudes regarding women in traditionally male-dominated operations positions. These railroads agreed to participate in this study in order to help identify sources of potential employment recruitment pools and pinpoint gender-specific barriers in the workplace. This research included tracing historical challenges women have faced in becoming railroad operating employees. In addition to analyzing trends and challenges of employing women in male-dominated roles, this study considered how job vacancies should be marketed to gain the interest of potential female employees and examined how to implement best practices to promote and foster greater numbers of women in these operational roles.

Block planning for intermodal rail: Methodology and case study

Blocking constitutes an important rail freight transport operation, by which cars with potentially different origins and destinations are grouped to be moved and handled as a single unit, yielding economies of scale. We address the tactical block-planning problem for intermodal railroads, which has been little studied so far. We propose a new block service network design model explicitly considering the specificity of intermodal rail, and which may be solved using commercial software for realistic sizes. We illustrate the performance and interest of the proposed method through an extensive case study of a major North American railroad.

Friction dampers—Everything old is new again

The title is suggested by a delightful song and dance scene in the film “All That Jazz” (1979). Due to the author's lack of grace, rather than repeating that performance, the presentation will explore a concept suggested by the friction draft gear patented by George Westinghouse in 1888. It and variants are in wide use throughout the North American railroad system. The idea to be examined exploits the fact that the normal forces on the faces of a wedge are greatly magnified, thereby enhancing the friction force associated with the Coulomb friction model. Because of this behavior a simple oscillator whose moving mass is a spring-loaded wedge can absorb much more vibrational energy than other passive techniques. Dynamic analysis of a one-degree-of-freedom model leads to an algebraic expression for the energy dissipated per unit cycle. That formula indicates that critical damping ratios much greater than one are readily obtainable if the springs are precompressed sufficiently. The simplicity of the underlying physical system implies that it is scalable over a large range, from MEMS to seismic structures. A particularly interesting idea is to fabricate a metamaterial consisting of an array of wedge dampers.The title is suggested by a delightful song and dance scene in the film “All That Jazz” (1979). Due to the author's lack of grace, rather than repeating that performance, the presentation will explore a concept suggested by the friction draft gear patented by George Westinghouse in 1888. It and variants are in wide use throughout the North American railroad system. The idea to be examined exploits the fact that the normal forces on the faces of a wedge are greatly magnified, thereby enhancing the friction force associated with the Coulomb friction model. Because of this behavior a simple oscillator whose moving mass is a spring-loaded wedge can absorb much more vibrational energy than other passive techniques. Dynamic analysis of a one-degree-of-freedom model leads to an algebraic expression for the energy dissipated per unit cycle. That formula indicates that critical damping ratios much greater than one are readily obtainable if the springs are precompressed sufficiently. The simplicity of the underlyin...

Reasons for Commuter Rail Electrification: Early 20th Century and Since 2000

Commuter rail electrification is a complex, capital-intensive matter requiring careful study. Between 1905 and 1931, North American railroads inaugurated electrifications for commuter trains that survive today in New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; and Montréal, Québec, Canada, as well as for intercity passenger trains between New Haven, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. A renaissance in electrification is taking hold once more. Since 2000, three new-start electrifications have been placed in service: one for intercity passenger trains (between Boston, Massachusetts, and New Haven, Connecticut), and two others for commuter rail (in Mexico City, Mexico, and Denver, Colorado). Two more are proceeding forward (in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and San Francisco, California). Despite the great changes caused throughout the railroad industry by the mid-20th century switch from steam to diesel, there is little change in the reasons for commuter railroad electrification in the two eras. Although the justification threshold is higher today than in the early 20th century, it has lowered somewhat as various considerations again converge in favor of electric traction. This is important, because electrification both requires and reinforces heavy ridership, and today’s resurgence of electrification is happening amid a sustained upswing in commuter rail ridership.

Relative Capacity and Performance of Fixed- and Moving-Block Control Systems on North American Freight Railway Lines and Shared Passenger Corridors

North American railroads are facing increasing demand for safe, efficient, and reliable freight and passenger transportation. The high cost of constructing additional track infrastructure to increase capacity and improve reliability provides railroads with a strong financial motivation to increase the productivity of their existing mainlines by reducing the headway between trains. The objective of this research is to assess potential for advanced Positive Train Control (PTC) systems with virtual and moving blocks to improve the capacity and performance of Class 1 railroad mainline corridors. Rail Traffic Controller software is used to simulate and compare the delay performance and capacity of train operations on a representative rail corridor under fixed wayside block signals and moving blocks. The experiment also investigates possible interactions between the capacity benefits of moving blocks and traffic volume, traffic composition, and amount of second main track. Moving blocks can increase the capacity of single-track corridors by several trains per day, serving as an effective substitute to construction of additional second main track infrastructure in the short term. Moving blocks are shown to have the greatest capacity benefit when the corridor has more second main track and traffic volumes are high. Compared with three-aspect signal systems, much of the benefits of moving blocks can be obtained from adding signals and implementing a four-aspect signal system. Knowledge of train delay performance and line capacity under moving blocks will aid railway practitioners in determining if the benefits of these systems justify the required incremental investment over current PTC overlay implementations.

2018 Railroad Tie Survey

This article reports results of a survey of railroad tie management conducted by the Association of American Railroads (AAR) reflecting 2017 practices. Similar surveys were previously conducted for 2013 and 2008 practices. North American railroads purchase approximately 23 million new wood crossties annually. Most ties are used to replace worn ties. Through this survey, the AAR seeks to provide clarity to its member railroads, the regulators, and other interested parties, regarding how the railroads’ tie purchase preferences and used tie management choices have been changing in response to changing technologies and regulations. Technology changes include use of borate preservatives to dual-treat wood ties to provide longer service life in high decay environments, non-wood ties made of concrete or plastic, and energy conversion methods for used ties such as gasification and torrefaction. Passage of the EPA Non-Hazardous Secondary Materials (NHSM) rule in 2011, including updates in 2013, 2016, and 2018, is reducing the potential for recycling used ties as fuel. However, the EPA is also promoting use of biological materials, such as wood, to produce energy without increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere, thus reducing human caused climate change. Purchase and tie management trends are indicated by the survey results. Approximately 95% of all ties purchased are preservative-treated wood. Due to demonstrated longer service life in high decay zones for wood ties that are dual treated with borate and either creosote or copper naphthenate, the fraction of concrete and plastic tie purchases has decreased while the faction of dual treated wood tie purchases has increased. Recycling used ties for energy remains the most common practice, at 66% of ties, but has declined from 81% in 2013. Reuse of ties for other treated wood uses, such as landscape and agricultural type purposes, remains common at approximately 18%. Landfill disposal remains uncommon, but seems to be increasing at 6% of removed ties. The shift away from recycling for energy is thought to result from the both impact of the EPA NHSM rule and the low cost of natural gas. The smaller market tie users, mainly the short line railroads in contrast to the Class 1 railroads, manage far fewer ties per company, but purchase and manage approximately 31% of all ties. The short lines recycle to landscape and agricultural uses at about half the rate of the Class 1s and dispose in landfills at a much higher rate of 76% versus 1.2% for the Class 1s. This difference is thought to result from the economics and availability of local versus distant management options.

Direct reference-free measurement of displacements for railroad bridge management

Today, railroads carry 40% of the total freight tonnage in North America, and this demand will double in the next 20 years. Half of the North American railroad bridges are over 100 years old. Measuring bridge displacements under train loading can assist in quantifying the safety and reliability of railroad operations. However, obtaining bridge displacements in the field is often challenging due to the lack of fixed reference points. This research studies the direct measurement of reference-free dynamic displacements using a sensing system composed of one passive-servo electromagnetic-induction (PSEMI) velocity sensor and one built-in hardware integrator unit. The authors used a shake table to quantify the accuracy of the PSEMI sensing system. The shake table replicated various bridge displacements collected in the field under train-crossing events. The results show that direct reference-free displacement errors are less than 10% when compared to linear-variable-differential-transducer (LVDT) measurements. The correlation coefficient between measurements is greater than 0.9, indicating the high correlation between the two measurements. The errors are reasonable within standard railroad management scenarios for decision making and bridge prioritization. The indirect estimated displacement (Lee-method) result shows that it is a structural dynamic parameter-related approach, because its estimation accuracy depends on the preciseness of the estimated structural dominant period. The conclusions of this study support the use of the PSEMI sensing system as an effective means to measure dynamic displacements of railroad bridges under train loading without a fixed reference or additional computing efforts.

The Life and Death of North American Rail Freight Electrification

Although completely dieselized today aside from certain commuter and intercity passenger routes, U.S. railroads were world leaders in electrification in the early 20th century. The Pennsylvania Railroad and the Milwaukee Road had the most extensive electrifications, but several other railroads electrified largely for freight service. This paper explores the decisions to electrify freight railroads in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico (largely for short tunnels where steam locomotives were not practicable, mountain grades, and busy traffic districts), and why electrifications were discontinued (underpowered installations, aging electric infrastructure, and changes in ownership that made electrification geographically obsolete). Energy shortfalls and price spikes since the 1970s have provoked interest in electrification from freight railroads, but this interest has subsided whenever fuel prices decline. Although it is possible that environmental considerations may lead to electrification in some contexts, as long as fossil fuel prices remain low, electrification is unlikely to play a major role on North American railroads.

Railway Engineering Education Symposium

Although freight traffic declined in 2016, North American railways have experienced a decades-long period of growth in freight ton-miles and in the number of commuter and intercity passenger rail trips. This growth, combined with the aging railway workforce, has triggered renewed demand for university graduates to enter railway careers. However, after decades of neglect, only a few North American academic programs are engaged in rail-related research and education. The railway academic community must be rebuilt to meet the industry workforce needs of the future. Since 2008, the Railway Engineering Education Symposium (REES) has been staged as a biannual collaboration between academia and industry to expose professors to railway engineering education topics. REES has prompted faculty at numerous universities to expand railway content in introductory transportation courses and to establish new courses on railway engineering topics. According to feedback from surveys of attendees, REES has evolved to support the growing railway academic community better. Expanding its original focus on new professors, REES now serves as a user conference for returning professors already engaged in railway education activities and is accompanied by online delivery of previous materials. This paper briefly reviews the decline of the relationship between railways and academia, then concentrates on the role of REES in its reemergence. Evidence of REES successes from participant surveys is documented, and challenges on the path forward are discussed.

As Evidenced by Theage-old Dynamics of Indicators of Major Rail System

The article compared results of economic development in terms of market mechanisms and centralized planning, based on an analysis of key indicators of the domestic and North American railroads for the century-long period. It was revealed that the higher and more sustainable dynamics of volume indicators, achieved in certain periods in a centrally planned economy does not show its advantages in comparison with the market economy, which is characterized by cyclical. It is shown that on the basis of centralized planning and control can not be implemented the strategy of “catching up development”. At the same time it found that the degree of success ensuring productive use of various resources in the framework of centralized planning and control is inversely proportional to their importance in the modern economy. This demonstrates the impossibility of the effective implementation of such methods of economic management. In conditions of market relations ensured advancing more efficient use of the main economic resource of our time — human capital. It is showing positive results of economic reforms in the railway transport. Made the conclusion about the necessity of development of market mechanisms and institutional framework (in particular, the removal of restrictions on the involvement of private capital in the development of the existing rail infrastructure) for the successful solution of problems of the Russian railway sector and the entire economy

Quantification of the lateral forces in concrete sleeper fastening systems

Consistent increases in cumulative freight tonnages, combined with the move towards increased higher-speed intercity passenger rail operation, have placed greater demands on North American railroad infrastructure. Concrete sleepers and fastening system components are known to fail at a wide range of life cycle intervals when subjected to demanding loading environments. Such failures can cause track geometry defects, require repetitive maintenance procedures, and present critical engineering challenges. Rail seat deterioration, the degradation of the concrete material beneath the rail, has been identified through a survey of North American Class I railroads to be the most-critical engineering challenge for concrete sleepers. Shoulder/fastener wear or fatigue was identified by the same survey as the second-most-critical engineering challenge related to concrete sleepers. Lateral forces transferred through the fastening system are thought to be a primary cause of degradation of insulators. The objective of this study is to quantify the demands on the insulator through analysis of the transfer of lateral wheel loads into the fastening system by measuring the magnitude of the lateral forces entering the shoulder, a component of the fastening system adjacent to the insulator. The lateral load evaluation device (LLED) was developed at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign to quantify these forces. Data captured by the LLED will assist the rail industry in moving towards the mechanistic design of future fastening systems, by quantifying the lateral forces in the fastening system under representative loading conditions. Information gained through this study will also lead to a better understanding of the frictional forces at key interfaces in the fastening system. Preliminary results show that the transfer of lateral wheel loads into the fastening system is highly dependent on the magnitude of the lateral wheel loads and the frictional characteristics of the fastening system.

A Two-Model Solution Approach for the Monthly Coal Train Reservations Planning Problem

The monthly coal train reservations planning problem arises in the unit train business of North American railroads. It involves a variety of operational and tactical decisions such as train formation, routing, and scheduling. As a result of the extensive scope of coal transportation in the United States, models for this problem grow quickly to a size unmanageable by state-of-the-art optimization software. Therefore, we propose a two-model heuristic solution methodology that is time-efficient and produces good quality solutions. The first model is developed under simplifying assumptions and yields an upper bound on the number of reservations to be accepted during the month. It also assigns car consists to reservations based on aggregate supply and demand of resources. This model also provides a tentative schedule for trains, and sets precedence relations between reservations. These being given, a second procedure is used to construct a detailed monthly schedule through the solution of network flow models and through the solution of a job-shop scheduling problem. The resulting solution is then improved through a large-scale neighborhood search. We evaluate our approach computationally, both on randomly generated and practical instances. We show numerically that our approach outperforms current practice.

Railroad bridge monitoring using wireless smart sensors

Railroads carry more than 40% of the freight, in terms of tons per mile transported in North America. A critical portion of the railroad infrastructure is the more than 100,000 bridges, which occur, on the average, every 1.4 miles of track. Railroads have a limited budget for capital investment. Therefore, decisions on which bridges to repair/replace become critical for both safety and economy. North American railroads regularly inspected bridges to ensure safe operation that can meet transport demands, using inspection reports to decide which bridges may need maintenance, replacement, or further investigation. Current bridge inspection practices recommend observing bridge responses under live load to help assess bridge condition. However, measuring bridge responses under train loads in the field is a challenging, expensive, and complex task. This research explores the potential of using wireless smart sensors (WSS) to measure bridge responses under revenue service traffic that can be used to inform bridge management decisions. Wireless strain gages installed on the rail measure real-time train loads. Wireless accelerometers and magnetic strain gages installed in the bridge measure associated bridge responses. The system is deployed and validated on a double-track steel truss bridge on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, owned by the Canadian National Railway. A calibrated finite element model of the bridge with known train input load estimated the responses of the bridge at arbitrary, unmeasured locations, showing the possibility of applying the system for decision making process. These results demonstrate the potential of WSS technology to assist with railroad bridge inspection and management practice. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.