24.07.07
ENSCO wins $67m contract with the Federal Railroad Administration
ENSCO Inc., a diversified research, development and information technology company, has been awarded a contract to support the Automated Track Inspection Program (ATIP) for the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). The five year contract is valued at $67 million.
ATIP, which is administered by the FRA Office of Safety Assurance and Compliance, serves an important role in the FRA’s overall safety oversight programme. The primary purpose of ATIP is to ensure track safety standards are met by helping FRA inspectors to identify the most important locations and conditions for them to evaluate.
To meet this goal of ATIP, FRA utilizes automated track inspection vehicles, also known as track geometry survey cars, to examine critical parts of the nation’s railroad system.
Under the ATIP contract, ENSCO will operate and maintain the FRA’s three track geometry survey cars. The FRA ATIP fleet was recently expanded with the addition of two new cars. In addition to the DOTX 217, FRA has added DOTX 219, a self-propelled track geometry car, and DOTX 220, which is a towed high-speed track geometry car capable of surveying at speeds up to 125 mph. ENSCO, and its partners, Plasser American and Colorado Railcar, built these new state of the art track inspection cars under a separate contract and delivered them to the FRA earlier this year.
Amtrak, the sole long distance passenger train operator in the United States, also operates a fleet of inspection cars to ensure safety on all the tracks they use. One of the inspection cars, the Amtrak 10003, is a dedicated coach in a high-speed Acela trainset. ENSCO supplied and maintains all of the inspection systems used by Amtrak.
Aside from manufacturing and operating track geometry inspection vehicles, ENSCO develops and produces other inspection equipment such as the gauge restraint measurement system, joint bar inspection system, catenary measurement system and rail corrugation measurement system. ENSCO also offers inspection services in track geometry, rail profile, tunnel clearance and joint-bar, using ENSCO-owned equipment.
Many ENSCO remote vehicle-track interaction monitoring systems are operating on passenger and freight lines in the United States. Simultaneous and continuous monitoring are performed on revenue trains; analyses are performed in real time by the onboard system, preset alert and alarm conditions are reported via wireless communication channels to the database management centre. Results from all monitors are organized, analyzed and presented to users over the Internet through a web browser. Notification is made automatically to appropriate staff when an alarm condition is encountered. Such continuous and intensive monitoring serves as a great complement to more detailed but infrequent inspections by track geometry cars.
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