RailTEC was privileged this Fall to have a series of visiting speakers willing to share their in-depth knowledge and expertise in the rail industry with Illinois students enrolled in CEE 595HAL (High-Efficiency Freight Rail Transportation). Five of these presenters also gave William W. Hay Seminars and spoke to hundreds of participants both virtually and in-person. CEE 595HAL focused on properly managing the changes that railroads face as they continuously evolve to take advantage of the economies of scale made by possible by their inherent capacity to move larger, heavier materials in greater quantities through use of larger, higher capacity freight cars, and longer trains.
Thank you to the following classroom speakers:
September 10 – Mike Roney (Canadian Pacific Railway, retired) – Topic: Benchmarking Heavy Haul Evolution
September 17 – Ted Sussmann (US DOT Volpe Center and University of Hartford) – Topic: Track Substructure
September 24 – Duane Otter (TTCI) – Topic: Railway Bridges
October 8 – Dave Davis (TTCI, AAR, retired) / Steve Wilk (TTCI) – Topic: Track Superstructure
October 22 – Jon Jeambey (TTX, retired) – Topic: Rolling Stock Innovations: Success and Failures
October 29 – Dick Dawson (TTX, retired) – Topic: Empirical vs Analytic Approaches to Solving Railcar Design Problems
November 12 – Mike Iden (Union Pacific Railroad, retired) – Topic: Motive Power
November 19 – Tom Haley (Union Pacific Railroad, retired) – Topic: Railroad Operations
December 3 – Carl Martland (MIT, retired) – Topic: HAL Economics
