Suburban Train

Training railway staff and preventing rail corrugations will put Australia on track for a much improved safety record.

Railways and rail staff are on the right track through two innovative UQ research projects.

One UQ team is testing the safety training of many of the 9000 New South Wales rail staff to help them better manage stress and crises, while the other aims to predict and prevent the corrugation of railway tracks.

The safety-training audit is the result of coronial inquiries following several serious train accidents in NSW in recent years.

The inquiries recommended more staff training in decision making and problem solving skills to respond to such emergencies, and resulted in NSW’s rail authority, RailCorp, contracting UQ to evaluate its $22 million virtual reality (VR) accident and disaster training program.

Dr Jennifer Tichon, a computer and human behaviour expert with the School of Human Movement Studies, is leading the UQ team.  It includes Dr Guy Wallis, a Senior Research Fellow also in Human Movement Studies, and Associate Professor Justin Kenardy, the Director of Clinical Psychology with the School of Psychology.

The VR simulations include train collisions, passengers falling off platforms or being trapped in doors, underground fires, track work accidents and handling drunken passengers. 

“Past training had focused on having a rule for each situation.  People were trained to stay within their role, not think outside the square,” Dr Tichon said .
She said the project represented one of few attempts to use the psychological benefits of VR outside combat or flight training situations.

Equally important to passenger safety is rail track corrugation, which is both dangerous and costly to repair.

A team of UQ mechanical engineers and Queensland Rail, Rail Corp, the Australian Rail Track Corporation and the Cooperative Research Centre for Railway Engineering and Technologies, is working to predict and prevent corrugation.

Rail corrugation appears as waves in tracks, usually on busy routes or lines that experience heavy cornering, accelerating or slowing.

“It is caused by a complex interaction between vehicle and track vibrations and contact wear occurring over many wheel set passages,” said team leader Dr Paul Meehan.

The UQ team is building a rail corrugation software estimator to show how fast corrugation will grow on lines around Australia based on factors such as traffic, tonnage, speeds and track radius.

“Wherever you get vibrations occurring, you can get fatigue cracks growing. If left unchecked, these cracks cause surface shelling and track failure then you can get derailments,” Dr Meehan said.

Staff training

FUNDING
RailCorp
Australian Research Council

RESEARCHERS
Dr Jennifer Tichon  www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/tichonjg.html
(email: jtichon@uq.edu.au)
Dr Guy Wallis  www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/wallisg.html
Associate Professor Justin Kenardy  www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/kenardyja.html

Website: www.hms.uq.edu.au/vislab/


Corrugation project

FUNDING
Cooperative Research Centre for Railway Engineering and Technologies

RESEARCHERS
Dr Paul Meehan  www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/meehanpa.html
(email: meehan@uq.edu.au)
Dr Bill David
Robin Horwood
Tien Vuoung

Website: www.uq.edu.au/mecheng

On this site

Go to top