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12/6/2016

Help with PTC implementation: Supply community perspectives

There’s only about two years left for the dozens of freight and commuter railroads impacted by the Rail Safety Act of 2008 to meet the federal deadline for implementing positive train control (PTC). Or, nearly four years remaining for those roads that meet certain conditions for a two-year extension, such as the installation of all PTC hardware by 2018’s end.

When completed, PTC systems will be operating on about 60,000 route miles in the United States. The systems will include devices installed on 25,000 passenger and freight locomotives, or 90 percent of all motive power.

But before railroads reach the completion stage, teams of railroaders, manufacturers, software designers and safety experts will continue to toil full time to develop, test, validate and install the many complicated and interconnected pieces of PTC systems. The rail supply community offers many products and services — some of which are new or redesigned — to help railroads adopt the technology.

In November, Progressive Railroading sent the following question to dozens of positive train control (PTC) suppliers and service providers: How is your company helping railroads implement PTC, and how does that assistance factor into the rail industry’s efforts to adopt the technology by the end of 2018 or 2020?

The following 28 companies responded via email. Click on any company to read their response.

Alstom
Ansaldo STS
Dayton T. Brown
Fabricated Metals
Geomatic Technologies
Hemisphere GNSS
Herzog Technologies
HUBER+SUHNER
Interrail Inc.
LILEE Systems
LinkUP International
LTK
Maser Consulting
Meteorcomm
The Omnicon Group
Parsons
PS Technology
Rail Power Services
Siemens
Smiths Microwave/PolyPhaser
Snyder Equipment
Sunrise Camp PTC Services
Tech Mahindra
VHB
Wabtec
Wi-Tronix
Wilmore Electronics
ZTR