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The 2016 Joint Rail Conference (JRC) was held in downtown
Columbia, the capital city of South Carolina, 12—15 April 2016. In addition to three major sponsoring
organizations—ASME, IEEE, and ASCE—the University of
South Carolina (USC) also co-sponsored this major annual railroad forum in
North America. As such, a special tour
was arranged by the USC Engineering College for attendees to visit the
facilities related to rail engineering research, which followed the technical sessions
on 13 April. The figures below show examples of early mobile radio equipment displayed in the lobby of the newly
completed USC Engineering College Building.
A reception featuring a Southern-style barbeque buffet with student
music performance was also offered in the courtyard of the building. JRC 2016 General Chair Dimitris Rizos addressed attendees during the reception on the programs in Railroad Engineering incubated
and  fully developed in recent years by the Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering. He also mentioned that, traditionally, South Carolina
is not perceived as a major railroad state, but the rail system in that state
has become a crucial component of multimodal networks in the country due to the
increasing freight volumes seen in the state’s ports.
The conference began with two technical tours in the
morning of 13 April. One tour was to the HARSCO manufacturing facilities
through the line of track construction equipment. The other was to the historic
South Carolina Railroad Museum including the opportunity to ride on vintage
trains along the line operated and maintained by the museum. Technical sessions
began in the afternoon of 13 April at Columbia Marriott in downtown Columbia.
The theme of this year is “Railroads, Progress toward a Safe, and Sustainable
Future”. The technical program was organized into ten tracks with over one
hundred papers covering the wide spectrum of technical interests:
- Track 1: Railroad Infrastructure Engineering
- Track 2: Rail Equipment Engineering
- Track 3: Signal and Train Control Engineering
- Track 4: Service Quality and Operations Research
- Track 5: Planning and Development
- Track 6: Safety and Security
- Track 7: Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
- Track 8: Urban Passenger Rail Transport
- Track 9: Electrification
- Track 10: Vehicle Track Interaction
In addition, the National University Rail Center also
organized a track for student paper presentations. All technical papers and
oral presentations split into five parallel sessions each day covering all
aspects of railroad civil, electrical, mechanical, and systems engineering, as
well as rail safety, planning, design, financing, operations, and management.
JRC 2016 concluded as a successful forum for information networking, idea
exchanging, and meeting of old and new peers in the railroad engineering around
the world.
JRC 2017 will be held in Philadelphia, 4—7 April 2017. Details can be found at the official JRC
website: http://lyris.asmestaff.org/t/331965/5156255/37321/9/. |
