Making train traffic safer is the goal of a study being conducted at Wellborn and Graham Roads in College Station. That sound is tough to miss; the loud horn of a train as it rolls through Bryan-College Station.
They are two cities with ties to the railroad industry that go back more than 100 years.
Those ties make College Station an appropriate site for a study aimed at making train traffic safer.
A group of researchers at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute are using hi-tech sensors to test two types of retaining walls to see which one makes the ground underneath the tracks more stable.
"As the trains pass by we record how much the wall moves and what stresses, the build up behind the wall," said Charles Aubeny, who is a professor of civil engineering at Texas A&M and a TTI researcher.
"It's a very heavy train hurdling by. What are the dynamic loads on that wall and then one of the safety issues is if the wall deflects and moves the track could settle and you know cause a potential safety problem," said Aubeny, PH.D."
The project is funded by a $300,000 grant from TxDOT through a partnership with Union Pacific Railroad.
Helping Charles Aubeny with the study is a small team of students and professors from Texas A&M and UT-San Antonio.
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