Railroad Scholars

It’s a short line. A training center. A short line and a training center. It’s the Canadian Heartland Training Railway (CHTR), which will operate a former Central Western Railway Corp. branch line in Stettler, Alberta, to move freight as well as provide conductor trainees hands-on courses in a realistic work environment.

An education division of the Railway Association of Canada (RAC), the Institute of Railway Technology (IRT) has offered a conductor training program in association with Vancouver’s British Columbia Institute of Technology, Calgary’s Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and Toronto’s George Brown College since September 2001. But something’s been missing the past three years.

“While employers of the first few classes of conductors were satisfied with the students’ knowledge, [railroads] expressed a need for graduates to have practical experience with specific skills,” says IRT Director John Carstairs, adding that some students also voiced a desire to immediately perform the job — and avoid an apprenticeship period — after joining a railroad.

Lab not so fab: Enter CHTR, a non-profit company formed earlier this year to provide the practical training portion of the conductor curriculum. Although the Calgary institute has a 300-foot training track on campus and Vancouver college has access to a nearby rail yard, those universities offer hands-on training in more of a lab environment rather than a realistic railroad setting, says CHTR President Joseph Bracken.

“We’re going to train the students as if they’re an employee of our railroad on their very first day,” he says, adding that two-week training sessions will begin at CHTR in the fall and the railway eventually will train about 120 students annually.

Some students got a taste of the railroad life — and few hours of sleep — during a four-day pilot session held at the railway in April 2004.

“Students stayed in a motel near the railroad, worked different shifts and did all the tasks of a conductor,” says Carstairs. “They even got phone calls in the middle of the night changing their [assigned] tasks and reporting times.” But before they could begin disrupting students’ sleep patterns, Bracken and RAC officials spent a year developing the CHTR.

They approached RailAmerica Inc., which owns Central Western Railway, with the idea that the CHTR could take over the little-used, 21-mile branch line and operate a short line and training center. Central Western Railway moved cars over the line for a few grain customers once a week and Alberta Prairie Railway operated excursion trains several times a week.

Bracken and RAC officials worked out a deal to lease the line from RailAmerica for two years. If the railway increases the line’s carloads, CHTR will pay the short-line holding company a slightly higher lease rate.

Officials also reached an agreement with Alberta Prairie that allows tourist trains to continue using the line. CHTR hired a general manager of operations and three contract workers to run the short line.

“We believe we can be successful as a training service and as a business,” says Bracken. “There could be some additional opportunities in the grain area.”

A refreshed feeling: There also are ample opportunities for CHTR to provide refresher training courses for short line and industrial railway engineers and conductors who need to fulfill federal qualification and re-qualification requirements. Refresher sessions — which could attract 100 more CHTR users annually — might begin this month, says Bracken.

In addition, CHTR will begin providing hands-on courses for car and locomotive inspection, and track maintenance trainees by year end, he says.

IRT is preparing to expand its training programs, too. Provider of a rail traffic controller program since September 2000, the institute will launch a signals and communications technician program in association with the Souther

Fonte: Progressive Railroading