The RTAA has kept up its calendar of events throughout 2020, with more opportunities to engage and connect in 2021.
RTAA is a rail industry technical organisation that serves individuals and organisations interested in understanding and furthering the rail track industry and includes suppliers, machinery manufacturers, contractors and other support industries. The RTAA has a proud history and has been in existence for over 45 years serving its members with conferences, Field Days and meetings. The impact of COVID has meant a rethink on how the RTAA can serve its members and the rail track industry. While face to face meetings are not currently being held, the RTAA has commenced holding Webinars on various topics and this will continue through to March 2021. These can be viewed on the RTAA website in case you miss the live presentation.
RTAA announced the winner of Emerging Rail Specialist at the annual Australasian Rail Industry Awards in October. The winner was Jerome Pun from Monash Institute of Railway Technology (IRT). The award includes attendance at an international rail or transport conference. Also congratulations to our other finalists for this award, Jonathan Mendes, Bombardier Transportation, Nathan Atkins, Rio Tinto, Opinderjit Samra, Arup and Sean O’Halloran, MTM.
At the same ceremony, the RTAA technical committee chairperson, Peter Milton received the 2020 Australasian Rail Industry’s Rail Career Achievement Award. Peter has worked in the rail industry for 45 years and has been an active member of the RTAA for many years. Peter has been working with the other members of the RTAA technical committee selecting and reviewing papers for the 2020 AusRAIL conference. A diverse selection of papers was reviewed and the final selection will cover a range of topics that will interest the RTAA audience. Some papers such as the use of Hemp in the manufacture of sleepers are meant to provide alternatives approaches to the current sleepers designs and materials.
Another paper describes the design of the rail track on pedestals in rail car depots uses the bridge standard and how this produces a conservative design. The author provides an alternative approach the design which will produce what is considered to be a more appropriate output. Rail grinding is now an accepted maintenance practice that extends the life of rail by careful management of rail head and the paper by Speno looks at the gaps in the current standards and the expected quality of the finished product.
The other two papers cover a range of topics including the use and analysis of data to provide data driven maintenance, the
role of the independent verifiers in project delivery and the improvement of the safety of trackworkers in multi track environments. These six papers will all be presented in two sessions at the Ausrail virtual conference in December 2020.
The RTAA Diversity and Inclusion Award will again be awarded in 2021. The RTAA has recognised the need to promote diverse workplaces by making the promotion of diverse workplaces as one of the key priority areas. The RTAA Diversity and Inclusion Award recognise the outstanding achievements of members in the promotion of diversity and workplace inclusion in rail. Details of the award and judging criteria will be posted on the RTAA website shortly.
The RTAA Annual Dinner in collaboration with the NSW Chapter of the Rail Technical Society of Australasia (RTSA) was postponed in 2020 due to COVID. A date in 2021 is being finalised to host this event in Sydney. The winner of the RTAA Diversity and Inclusion Award will be presented at the Annual Dinner.
Due to the impact of COVID, the RTAA Field Day, held in conjunction with Sydney Trains, has now been moved to mid-2022. The site of the Field Day is also moving to a location within the existing rail facilities at Chullora which will provide an area suitable for both displays and demonstrations. The Field Day committee is meeting to work out the site detail and layout and further information will be provided during 2021.
2020 will certainly be a year that everyone will remember and how well we all adapted to a new way of working. The RTAA will continue to provide support to its members over the next few years and looks forward to achieving 50 years of support to the rail track industry in 2023.