The photo above, taken looking up at the elevated steelwork of Shibuya Station in Tokyo, is a one-frame history of steel construction. Dome-headed rivets, high-strength bolted splices, welded gussets, and retrofit bracing all share the same few square meters of structure — and every train… Read more
Introduction Some of the best structural engineering field trips are unplanned. While passing through St Pancras International station in London, I photographed three artifacts that together tell a 159-year story of structural engineering: the great Barlow train shed roof, a foundry plate cast in 1867,… Read more
Anatomy of a Railway Leaf Spring: Axlebox-Mounted Primary Suspension Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons, “Leaf spring on a train.jpg”, showing the primary suspension of a piece of German rolling stock. The photo below is one of the clearest close-up views of a European-style axlebox-mounted leaf spring… Read more
Union Pacific has begun spraying white paint on the sides of its rails in the hottest sections of its 32,000-mile network. The program, which entered targeted deployment in 2025, uses a hi-rail truck with a spray rig to coat both faces of the rail web… Read more
I recently rode in the above French TER, Electric Train, Model Z 24500, Lyon to Annecy. A sample accelerometer time history is shown above. The sensor was mounted on a passenger car floor, a Slam Stick X, sampled at 400 samples/sec. The spectrogram of the… Read more
Question: MIL-STD-810G, Method 526 Rail Impact, outlines the physical test of an actual system at 4, 6, and 8 mph. Is there an equivalent laboratory shock test for equipment which is to be transported via railroad car? Answer 1: from Tom Irvine U.S. Army TB… Read more