Rail Group On Air

Railway Age’s 58th Railroader of the Year, Canadian Pacific President and CEO Keith Creel, talks with Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono about his career, and his mission at CP, in this audio version of the video interview. Creel has been instrumental in Canadian Pacific forging a leadership role in the industry, while acknowledging the railroad’s place in history and its role in driving the North American economy forward. He has helped renew Canadians’ and CP employees’ sense of pride in a company that connected a nation, and connected Canada to the rest of the world. Under his steady hand, and under very difficult circumstances this past year, CP has been a safe, efficient and productive railroad, enabling its customers to connect with domestic and global markets. Podcast sponsored by Amsted Rail and TrinityRail.

Railroad Financial Corp. President and Railway Age Financial Editor David Nahass; Cowen and Company Managing Director and Railway Age Wall Street Contributing Editor Jason Seidl; and Cowen and Company Transportation Equipment Analyst Matt Elkott join Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono to offer their perspectives on 2021, a year in which the world hopes to see the end of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. What are the prospects for freight rail growth? For railcar orders and deliveries growing? Will intermodal continue to lead the way? How is the rail industry’s trucking competition faring?

Jim Derwinski, Commuter Rail Coalition Chair and CEO/Executive Director, Metra; John Cline, CRC Government Affairs Director and Principal, Cline Strategic Consulting; Chuck Spitulnik, CRC Counsel and Partner, Kaplan Kirsch Rockwell; and KellyAnne Gallagher, CRC Executive Director, discuss access, capacity, and public convenience and necessity issues of importance to commuter railroads with Railway Age Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono.

Cogniac is a startup enterprise-class AI image and video analysis company providing enterprise-class software for automating railroad visual inspection tasks. Based in San Jose, Calif., the company has landed two contracts with U.S. Class I railroads and a Mexican client in the past year. Cogniac is also working with the AAR to help reshape and modernize federally mandated inspection regulations. Dr. Amy Wang, a technologist and the co-founder and VP Systems at Cogniac, discuss advances in deep learning to achieve better-than-human accuracy and continuously improve railroad inspection workflows with Railway Age Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono.

Industry 4.0 (also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution) is a reality. Railroads, including their partners in the transportation supply chain, are at the beginning of their journey to establishing true end-to-end digital continuity. For example: Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT); Positive Train Control (PTC) and Enhanced Train Control (ETC); and AI (artificial intelligence)-based automation such as expanding autonomous inspection to include predictive analytics for track data. How do we know that these solutions and systems are safe and that there are no lurking issues? How do we know that the integration of multiple components from vendors, partners, and even from within meet safety objectives? How do we know if safety integrity is preserved after a change is made? How do we shift the paradigm where safety moves from a cost center to a value-added business driver? In Part 3, the conclusion of this three-part series on System Safety, Sonia Bot chief executive of The BIT Consulting Group Inc., and Tony Zenga, owner of CMTIGroup Inc., draw attention to three often neglected or not fully understood aspects of system safety practices. They are integration into the systems engineering lifecycle, designing for safety, and process-based safety performance management. By having these technical aspects in place, a system safety practice can effectively achieve its potential and influence the maturation of the organization’s safety culture.

Sometimes it seems like lightning strikes and we see a significant jump in the capabilities of technology. Such is the case with PS Technology’s Precision Train Builder™ (PTB), a suite of abilities that enables railroads to enhance safety using physically accurate simulation. This ability is leading to improvements in both accident analysis and train consist design. But, like most significant technology shifts, it’s usually about many separate things being in the right place at the right time. PS Technology has taken the embedded physics simulation within their locomotive simulator products and connected the dots into a broader picture of railroad safety. Here is where the nexus of technology has resulted in new abilities. The combination of railroad GIS track data, actual locomotive event recorder data, and robust computational analysis have come together to provide new insights about train behavior and safe operations. PST President Seenu Chundru discuss PTB’s capabilities with Railway Age Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono.

Industry 4.0 (also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution) is a reality. Railroads, including their partners in the transportation supply chain, are at the beginning of their journey to establishing true end-to-end digital continuity. For example: Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT); Positive Train Control (PTC) and Enhanced Train Control (ETC); and AI (artificial intelligence)-based automation such as expanding autonomous inspection to include predictive analytics for track data. How do we know that these solutions and systems are safe and that there are no lurking issues? How do we know that the integration of multiple components from vendors, partners, and even from within meet safety objectives? How do we know if safety integrity is preserved after a change is made? How do we shift the paradigm where safety moves from a cost center to a value-added business driver? In Part 2 of this three-part series, which accompanies an article in Railway Age’s November 2020 issue, Sonia Bot, The BOT Consulting Group Inc., and Tony Zenga, CMTIGroup Inc., make the case for system safety as the necessary discipline for railroads to embed as they move forward in innovating and advancing in the 21st century.

On Jan. 1, 2021, Katie Farmer will become the first woman chief executive of a Class I railroad, BNSF. Farmer knows BNSF inside and out. She’s held leadership positions in every major function of the company, starting as a 22-year-old management trainee at predecessor Burlington Northern in 1992. At BNSF, she will oversee a 32,500-route-mile network that spans 28 states and three Canadian provinces for parent company Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., and lead the Board of Directors. Among Farmer’s priorities: driving productivity and delivering the kind of service BNSF customers have come to expect; modeling the way for communication across the railroad and ensuring that connections continue to be made with all the constituencies it touches; and supporting employees—some 36,000—so they, too, can reach their full potential by taking advantage of the professional development opportunities she was afforded. In this wide-ranging interview with Railway Age Executive Editor Marybeth Luczak, Katie Farmer talks about leading the railroad and its workforce, “the hard-working men and women at BNSF.” Podcast sponsored by TrinityRail.

Connecticut Department of Transportation Commissioner and Commuter Rail Coalition Co-Founder Joe Giulietti, accompanied by ConnDOT Public Transportation Bureau Chief Rich Andreski, discuss “Transformation and Innovation in the Commuter Rail Realm” with Railway Age Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono. Commuter rail customers almost disappeared, practically overnight, but they will come back. The unknowns are, what will a “new normal” look like, and how does the industry adjust to it? Rail transportation in all forms remains hugely popular, is important to social and economic progress, and is playing an important role in addressing climate change. But how well do our customers understand this? And, does staying relevant mean not assuming support for rail and consumer preferences will stay the same?

RT&S Editor-in-Chief Bill Wilson talks with new Railway Tie Association Executive Director Ashley Goodin on the current and future shape of the crosstie market.