I had the opportunity to get an extensive tour of the AAR’s TTCI facility in Pueblo on Friday as part of a transit noise/vibration conference. It’s a fascinating place. I put together an album of photos on Flickr, and thought it may be of interest to some of you.
https://www.flickr.com/gp/ereuter/57no7r
There were a few things that we weren’t allowed to photograph, most notably a bullet train that they wouldn’t tell us anything about, and several MBTA subway cars that had been blown up to test the effects of suicide bombing on the vehicles themselves. The tunnel in one of the photos is for repeating these tests inside of a tunnel.
The photos of wrecks are all first responder training scenarios. The crude oil scenario is piped with gas to catch fire on demand.
Additionally, on Thursday, we toured Rocla concrete tie, EVRAZ’s steel mill and rail rolling mill, Progressive Rail’s CWR welding facility (where they create 1700’ CWR strands), and an LB Foster plant where insulated rail joints are fabricated. Pueblo is a hotspot of rail manufacturing, apparently.