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Penn Station is one of the busiest passenger transportation facilities in the U.S., serving more than 600,000 commuter rail and Amtrak passengers each day. In late March and early April, Penn Station suffered two train derailments within a week of each other. Following both derailments, U.S...
From eliminating broken rails and combating punctured tank cars, to making stronger interfaces between rail ties and ballast, Volpe engineers support the Federal Railroad Administration in making passenger and freight rail travel safer.
From energy efficiency to fuel tank standards, Volpe’s range of rail expertise was on display at the 2015 Joint Rail Conference. Read on for brief summaries of seven Volpe papers presented during the conference, which examined A Century of Innovation: Heavy Haul to High-Speed Rail.
Volpe experts presided over 22 sessions and presented research results at 18 sessions at the Transportation Research Board’s 94th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., held January 11-15.
Volpe published 77 reports and conference papers in 2014 spanning a myriad of transportation research topics. View the topic areas and download free copies of Volpe’s transportation resources.
To help prevent the conditions that can lead to derailments, Volpe worked with a team to survey joint bars across the country’s rail system to understand why, and under what conditions, joint bars are at risk for failure.
Track and infrastructure failure is the second leading cause of train derailments in the United States. Vehicle-track interaction research investigates wheel-rail contact forces and their consequences to reduce railroad derailments and improve safety.
Nearly all cracks in rails are hidden—so says Dr. David Jeong, senior mechanical engineer at Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center. Jeong and his colleagues, in support of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), have been examining the mechanics of metal fatigue and crack growth...