Elizabeth and I went to the Village Inn for breakfast then returned to the hotel for our usual morning preparations. Today's activity was a pre-conference event so we had the whole morning to ourselves. At 12:30, those who had signed up for this tour met in one of the convention centre ballrooms for a mandatory safety briefing.
MxV Rail HistoryMxV Rail (full legal name: Transportation Technology Center, Inc.) is a subsidiary of the Association of American Railroads which conducts railroad equipment testing and training for member railroads. From 1982 until October 2022, AAR managed operations at the Transportation Technology Center (TTC) as part of public-private partnership between AAR and the TTC's owner, the Federal Railroad Administration. The TTC is a railroad equipment testing facility located northeast of Pueblo. AAR formed its Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) subsidiary in 1998, and TTCI assumed the contract. In March 2021, TTCI lost the contract to operate the TTC, effective October 2022.
In April 2021, TTCI announced plans to build a new, independent research facility in Pueblo after reaching an agreement with the Pueblo Economic Development Corporation. The new facility would be in the PuebloPlex industrial park, site of the former Pueblo Chemical Depot, just south of the TTC. In March 2022, the AAR announced that TTCI would be rebranded into MxV Rail, a name based on the mathematical formula for momentum: mass x velocity.
Scott Cummings, Assistant Vice President Research and Development was our host and showed "Moving our Industry Forward".
MxV Rail, the world's leading talent for rail research, consulting, training and testing. Moving our industry toward maximum safety, reliability, efficiency and resiliency.
Industry owned, independently operated.
Diagram of their complex.
Testing - Full scale on track and laboratory testing.
Specialized Laboratory Testing.
High Speed Loop - Endurance and Performance Testing.
Suspension Resonance Track {SRT}.
Curving Preformance Track {CPT}.
Facility for Accelerated Service Testing {FAST}.
Consulting
Training.
Standards.
Research.
Scott Cummings.
Advancing Innovation.
FAST - A pillar of the SRI program.
Unlocking momentum.
Safety Briefing - Shawn Vecellio, Senior Assistant Vice President, Operations and Safety.
Three Pillars of Safety.
On-Site Safety Expectations.
On-Site Safety Guidelines.
Weather.
Multi-Campus Operations.
Animals Found Onsite.
Questions.
Shawn Vecellio. Everyone boarded the two motor coaches and we drove on Highway 50 to the former Pueblo Army Depot and stopped at the guard shack where we were waved into the facility.
Pikes Peak as seen from the bus.
Union Pacific locomotives.
Trailer train flat cars.
A rail line and wye.
MxV Rail hosts hazmat training exercises for teams from across the country; these are deliberately-derailed tank cars used in the simulations. We then were taken to the train.
Union Pacific SD70M 3886 leading the train that we were to ride here; some rare mileage.
Two former New Jersey Transit cars, one of which we would ride.
One of many storage bunkers on the site, some of which hold classic car collections belonging to individuals around the country.
MxV tours of their facility are not a common occurence.
A BNSF and a Union Pacific locomotive seen on our tour.
Track equipment seen from our train.
More of the storage bunkers.
Pikes Peak and the storage bunkers.
There were many more storage bunkers here than we expected to see.
Looking towards the Spanish Peaks.
Close-up of a storage bunker.
BNSF SD70MAC 8905 built by Electro-Motive Division in 1999 and Union Pacific SD40-2 4177, ex. Grand Trunk Western 5932, Missouri Pacific 3177, built as Electro Motive Division in 1975.
Coal cars on a bridge.
Pikes Peak once more.
A long line of freight cars.
The track equipment once again.
More of the storge bunkers. The line we were riding was the Fast Loop, which we rode twice.
Pikes Peak and a single storage unit.
BNSF SD70MAC 8905 and Union Pacific SD40-2 4177.
Coal cars out on the railroad.
BNSF 9540 leading a string of railroad cars with Pikes Peak in the second view. This ended our ride.
Electro Motive Division SDP40F 169, nee Amtrak 609, built by Electro-Motive Division in 1974, from the bus.
Electro Motive Division F40PH 232, built by Electro Motive Division in 1977.
Department of Transportation Comet car 5231, ex. Agence Métropolitaine de Transport 5231, exx. New Jersey Transit 5231, exxx. New Jersey Transit 131, nee Penn Central 131, rebuilt from an Arrow 1 multiple unit coach, originally built by St. Louis Car Company in 1988 and 1989.
Rail Escort Vehicle IDOX 030001 built by Vigor Works LLC in 2021. It is a prototype of an armored railcar that the U.S. Navy, in cooperation with the Department of Energy, developed to help protect trainloads of sensitive nuclear material. In January 2022, the Department of Energy sent its first prototype REV, to MXV Rail to begin a final two-year testing phase before being put into operation.
Atlas is a separate project to develop a new specialized 12-axle flatbed railcar to transport different types of standardized "casks", sealed containers designed to safely transport SNF and HLW. DOE has been exploring the possibility of acquiring a smaller 8-axle flatcar design, called Fortis, which could be cheaper and simpler to operate than Atlas. Atlas is a separate project to develop a new specialized 12-axle flatbed railcar to transport different types of standardized "cask" sealed containers designed to safely transport SNF and HLW. DOE has been exploring the possibility of acquiring a smaller 8-axle flatcar design, called Fortis, which could be cheaper and simpler to operate than Atlas.
More railroad equipment.
Rail Escort Vehicle 0300001 and the specialized 12-axle railcar built by Atlas.
Electro-Motive SD70ACe 1609, built as a Tier 4 demonstrator by the company in 2016.
Electro-Motive SD70ACe 1607, built as a Tier 4 demonstrator by the company in 2016.
Norfolk Southern SD70M 2595, built by Electro Motive Division in 2003.
Even more storage bunkers seen from the bus.
BNSF SD70MAC 9540, built by Electro-Motive Division in 1995.
Association of American Railroads track loading vehicle 110 built from a Southern Pacific SD45X. It has a fifth center axle that can be used to apply controlled loads to the track, bridges et cetera and is painted in Pennsylvania Railroad colours as a tribute to the late George Way, who was Vice-President of the Research and Technology Department.
The test vehicle can test for items such as vertical track stiffness, bridge dynamic behaviour, gage holding ability as a function of tie and fastener type, lateral track strength as a function of ballast type, ballast shoulder, ballast compaction, tie type.
New Jersey Transit Comet car Ib trailer 5225, ex. New Jersey Transit 114, nee Penn Central, built by St Louis rebuilt from Arrow I multiple unit coach in 1988.
Buildings on the Old Chemical Pueblo Depot.
New Jersey Transit cab car 5156, ex. New Jersey Tansit 505, nee Penn Central 102, built by St Louis Car Company cab rebuilt from Arrow I multiple unit coach in 1996.
A box car and another New Jersey Transit cab car.
Two Amtrak AEM-7 electric locomotives, no builder date or information, seen from the bus.
New Jersey Transit coach 2023. We went inside one of the buildings for a presentation.
A pen-and-ink drawing of Western Maryland Shay 6 by Blake Boucher on the way to the meeting room.
A pen-and-ink drawing of Union Pacific 2-8-8-2 3950 by Blake Boucher.
A pen-and-ink drawing of Denver and Rio Grande Western 4-8-4 1700, also by Blake Boucher.
Security and Emergency Response Training Center.
Facility for Accelerated Service Testing by Chris Johnson.
What is FAST?
Purpose.
New FAST track required for 2023 operations.
New FAST Loop.
New FAST Loop turning storage loop.
New FAST Loop-Tangent bypass.
Construction.
Construction pictures.
Support Systems and Tests.
Data first.
Operations.
Testing Overview.
Rails and Welds.
Special Trackwork.
Ties and Fasteners.
Substructure.
Track Stability.
Bridges.
Mechanical and Inspection.
Conclusion. We then were led on a short tour of this building.
Some of the buildings on the property had not been occupied for some time and this was one of those that MxV Rail had to strengthen and stabilize.
The locker room for employees.
Equipment scene.
Hoses used in testing.
Various parts of the shop. We then went to another meeting room for a second presentation.
Surface Transportation.
Impact testing.
New Acela train being tested.
A Caltrain bi-level car.
Caltrain bi-level car testing.
Caltrain testing.
Self driving car.
An accident.
Scenes from controlled tank car explosions.
SERTC MxX Rail partners.
MxV Rail and Department of Homeland Security.
An EMD six-axle 2400 kilowatt Joule battery locomotive, model SD40JR. It is equipped with an asynchronous traction drive with axle-by-axle traction force control. The maximum speed is stated to be 80 km/h, with a starting traction force of 600 kilonewtons and a continuous traction force of 416 kilonewtons. Specialized stationary charging stations have been developed to provide the locomotive with energy. A full battery charge takes less than four hours, providing enough charge for 24 hours of continuous operation. The EMD Joule battery model was introduced by Progress Rail in 2020 and Pacific Harbor Line was one of the first customers for this product.
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Caltrains testing with Pikes Peak looming behind.
ERTC Established.
SERTC and NDPC.
National Domestic Preparedness Consortium.
SERTC Remote NDPC Courses.
SERTC Residential NDPC Courses.
The tank car set up area.
Members of the Alternative Fuels and Flammable Incident Response and Management (Affirm).
Questions. That concluded the afternoon's visit to MxV Rail and after a refreshment break, all participants returned to the buses.
Three former Amtrak baggage cars, as seen from the bus as we were taken to the front gate.
We went west past the gate and to our right was a Pershing 1 missile on an M3 erector launcher, then returned to the Courtyard Hotel.
Later, we went to Texas Roadhouse with fellow RPCA members and friends John Goodman, Dan Meyer and Dawn Holmberg then returned to the hotel for the night.
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