AREMA leading C&S into the future: AREMA's C&S Functional Group is working to add value to membership in the organization through evolving new services to meet the needs of changing times - railroad civil and electrical engineer organization

Railway Track and Structures, Dec, 2002 by Tom Judge

The onset of AREMA five years ago brought together railroad civil and electrical engineers into the same professional organization for the first time. While the basic disciplines may be radically different, the two groups have worked hard together to make AREMA a highly successful organization.

And that effort is continuing.

"Our foremost challenge is to continue to seek out and implement new ways to add value to an AREMA C&S membership," said William Peterson, AREMA vice president, C&S Functional Group, and director, signal engineering, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe. "It's no secret that, since we split from AAR and became part of AREMA, membership dues, conference registration fees and our technical man ual sale prices are no longer being subsidized directly by the railroads. So it really is a challenge for us to make sure that we provide value for the AREMA membership.

"One of the things we're very pleased about is the new added focus of AREMA on the maintenance side," Peterson noted. "We believe that by incorporating the maintenance function with the mission of AREMA, we've really expanded the whole universe of what we can do and the people we can include. That directly provides more of a role for AREMA."

Peterson continued: "I think our foremost strength resides within the technical committees and their work product. It always has. Now with AREMA and its staff, we have the ability to leverage some new technologies like CD-ROM and the Internet to package and deliver that work product in really innovative ways with a minimum of overhead. That opportunity presents its own challenges, but we're rather excited about the untapped potential."

"We are making efforts in three main areas: providing services at the annual conferences, preparing and publishing the Manual parts of recommended practices and working on workshops and seminars," said Robert Nash, senior vice president, AREMA, and general manager, signals & communications, Canadian Pacific Railway. "Our industry has indicated it would like to see us provide more knowledge to help reduce costs and improve safety and efficiencies. We are looking at how to incorporate that in the technical conference and seminars and through manual parts. That could mean bringing the new manual parts to market more quickly or seminars and workshops tailored to meet those specific needs, or perhaps even changing the focus of the conference to move in that direction. We expect to provide more of that type of service.

C&S committees

The AREMA committees related to C&S are 34-Scales, 36-Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Warning Systems, 37-Signal Systems and 38-Information, Defect Detection & Energy Systems.

"All the committees are working on Manual parts," Peterson said. "Committee 34 works on the AAR scale handbook, which is one of their primary focuses. In addition to Manual parts, Committee 38 is also working through Subcommittee 38.2 on what we call the old blue book of inductive coordination and how we might interface with EPRI in a new effort by EPRI.

"Committees 36 and 37 also are continuing to develop the Manual parts, which is really the backbone of the way we do our design and construction," Peterson noted. "For example, Committee 36 is currently looking at LEDs and what kind of recommended practices we want with LED crossing warning signals. Committee 37 is also looking at LEDs in wayside signals."

"We also get involved with other committees, both inside and outside of AREMA," Nash pointed out. "We are broadening our outreach to provide and to tap into expertise in other industry areas.

"And we have asked the committees to come up with new workshop or seminar material," Nash said. "Right now, we have developed a course on vital circuit design. We've offered a course for the past couple of years called, 'Maintaining your future.' We are planning to develop more courses, and are currently looking into concepts for other workshops next year. We also have a seminar on highway traffic signal preemption."

Peterson noted: "Committee 36 has been very active in developing guidelines for four-quadrant gate installations. A lot of work by the committee went into Manual parts addressing four-quadrant gate guidelines. This committee has also been very active on the technical issues of preemption of highway traffic signals. They're also staying abreast with the Intelligent Transportation System efforts, with a subcommittee looking at ITS. Some of the same individuals are involved with IEEE committees on ITS standards as well. So there is some crossover."

"In addition, the committees are looking down the road at the next generation of train control and wireless communications," Nash explained. "These are issues being looked at by the industry as a whole. I can see these having a major impact on our technical committee work in the future. That's one of the reasons we changed the make-up of Bill's c&s functional board a little to add more communications input. We will be looking more at the communications side in 2003."