Approximately 25 RailTEC students and faculty attended the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association (AREMA) 2025 Annual Conference & Expo on 14-17 September at the Indianapolis Convention Center in Indianapolis, IN. Many RailTEC alumni were also in attendance and played a key role in the schedule.
Presentations by current RailTEC faculty, staff and students this year were:
- Identifying Frozen Ballast and the Impact it has on Rail Gaps – A Laboratory and Numerical Study
Coleman Froehlke & Marcus Dersch, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
- Turnout Frog Profile Optimization Through Dynamic Interaction Modeling with Revenue Service Wheel Profiles
Jaeik Lee, PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
In addition to attending technical presentations and sessions designed specifically for student participants, RailTEC students created two teams of five to battle in the AREMA Committee 24 Collegiate Quiz Bowl Competition. The first team consisted of Alex Roskov, Jose Gustavo V. S. Ramos, Derek Campbell, Kaifeng Hu, and Ryan Loscalzo. This team came from behind after three rounds to beat Penn State Team A by one point. The second team, consisting of Coleman Froehlke, Cayden Schroeder, Sam Eberle, Drew Hohe, and Batu Alp, tied for third place with Penn State Team B. RailTEC also took first place in last year’s Student Quiz Bowl in Louisville.
This year the Dr. William W. Hay Award for Excellence was given to Brightline Florida and HNTB Corp. for their 38-mile East-West Connector Project in Central Florida. This was the last piece of Brightline’s passenger-rail line between Orlando and Miami and riders now can travel from the Orlando International Airport to Miami in three hours and 25 minutes. The project, which included 20 grade separations, involved more than 700 workers including multiple RailTEC alumni.