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Technical Reports

North American Joint Positive Train Control Project

PTC offers the promise of significant potential benefits in railroad safety, capacity, and efficiency. However, PTC reveals new and much more complex design issues than those encountered with conventional train control systems. This is largely because a PTC system comprises a large, distributed,...

Subsurface Evaluation of Railway Track Using Ground Penetrating Radar

This report details the implementation of 2 GHz horn antennas for measuring working ballast thickness using ground penetrating radar and the initial implementation of a 500 MHz horn antenna used for subballast and subgrade characterization. The work was performed as part of the first task order and...

Interoperable Communications-based Signaling Project

Interoperable Communication-Based Signaling (ICBS) refers to an implementation of a train control system based on signaling principles whose system architecture and interface are documented as Recommended Practices (from the AREMA Manual of Recommended Practices for Communications and Signaling) by...

Development of an Adaptive Predictive Braking Enforcement Algorithm

Predictive enforcement braking is one of the key concepts behind positive train control (PTC) systems. If a train is on the verge of overrunning a target stopping location, such as an authority limit, the system enforces a brake application to stop the train safely short of the limit. The concept...

North Carolina "Sealed Corridor" Phase I, II, and III Assessment

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) tasked the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center to document the further success of the North Carolina DOT “Sealed Corridor” project through Phases I, II, and III. The Sealed Corridor is the section of the designated Southeast High Speed Rail...