28th ANNUAL WHEEL RAIL INTERACTION CONFERENCE

Principles Course Sessions Speaker:

Biography

Rob Caldwell

Rob Caldwell
Senior Engineer
NRC Canada

Biography: Rob is a senior engineer with NRC, and thrust leader for projects related to vehicle-track interaction. He has 25 years’ experience in the railway industry. During the last 22 years, he has been involved in scores of wheel-rail interface projects for both transit and heavy haul freight systems. Among his projects, he has designed profiles for Canadian Pacific Railway, Quebec Cartier Mining, Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway, Network Rail in the UK, MRS Logistica and VALE (Brazil), Amtrak, Sacramento RTD, Cleveland (GCRTA), New York (NYCTA), and TTC (Scarborough), and supervised junior engineering staff that have developed profiles for Port Authority Trans Hudson (PATH), St. Louis MetroLink, Brookfield Rail (Australia), SAR (Saudi Arabia), Capital Rail (Ottawa) and FMG (Australia).

Rob has also investigated rail wear rates as a result of different rail grinding strategies on heavy-haul freight track; determined the optimum spacing of wayside gauge-face lubricators on high speed passenger and freight track; and designed wheel and rail profiles to improve curving and tangent performance of freight and transit vehicles. Among current projects he is investigating the root cause of a sudden increase in wheel flats on a subway system, and working with a regional railway to reduce the impact of seasonal wheel shelling. Rob is a licensed professional engineer in Ontario, and a member of AREMA committees 4 and 17.