Back in the day, certain Engineering Colleges awarded either a BS in Railway Mechanical Engineering or Railway Electrical Engineering.

Purdue University and Worcester (MA) Polytechnic Institute are two that come to mind. Can anyone come up with more examples ?

Trivia: Purdues' sports teams are nicknamed the 'Boilermakers' in deference to the railroad connection-although the name may be changed. WPI, aka 'Whoppee' to the student body, once had an electric traction lab. Anyone know if there is any extant remant of the lab?

Finally it occurs to me that there may have been a BS in Railway Civil Engineering, too.

Dave

Dave,

Virginia Tech used to offer a specialty within Civil Engineering for Railway Engineering - as compared to Highway Engineering.

I believe Penn State had acquireed an old Baltimore streetcar and used it as a testbed for the electrical engineering department. I had heard they even had a length of track over which it was operated.

Dave Crow

According to information in "Rails to Penn State," recently published by Stackpole Books, in 1896 Penn State signed an agreement with the Bellefonte Central RR which allowed the stringing of a 500-volt overhead wire between State College and Strubles, and at the same time they acquired an old single truck trolley from Philadelphia Traction Co. In 1905, that car was replaced with one from United Railways & Electric of Baltimore. At about the same time, the overhead was cut back to only half a mile. It was dismantled completely between 1910 and 1917. Power was generated at the university's power plant.

During the same period, the university's Mechanical Engineering Department had an arrangement with the railroad to allow students to use no. 4, a 2-8-0, for practical work. In 1906, the PRR loaned a D-8 4-4-0, which was housed in a shed near the original station and used for the same purposes. The engine was lettered "The Pennsylvania State College" and given the number 1. A picture of no. 1 in the book shows it with wooden shelters built around the cylinders, so students could take measurements and readings while the engine was under way. On some occasions, the PRR even allowed no. 1 to be operated on its nearby Bald Eagle Branch, according to the text.

The University of Illinois and Purdue both had their own electric cars that were filled with test equipment and operated on the tracks of the local street railway systems; the Purdue test car, whose body was originally built by Brill for testing "Windsplitter" front end designs, still exists at MOT. Among the last graduates of the UofI railway electrical engineering program was George Krambles, who went on to be a co-founder of CERA and executive director of the Chicago Transit Authority.

My father studied electrical engineering at the University of Illinois. He took a class in electric railways and the class included an outing over the Illinois Traction from Urbana to Danville and on down to Ridge Farm. I still have his text book for the course.

The U of I also had one of only about four steam locomotive test plants ever built at the time he was there (1920s).

Glen Brewer

Michigan Tech has a program in Railroad Engineering. Too bad it didn't come about until after I graduated...

http://www.cee.mtu.edu/railroad/index.htm

Villanova's Mechanical Engineers used to do work at the steam plant, or so I have been led to believe! I think it is fair to say that most early engineering programs were very much hands on.

Actually, a lot of our curriculum at 'Nova involved talking about trains. Statics and dynamics often dealt wiht rolling friction, static friction, tangentral forces on curves, etc.. More specific Mech Eng courses deal with heat and mass trasfer, different thermodynamic cycles, and especially steam discussions and its properties.

I guess that over the years, educators have been theory focused rather than an industry focused, resulting in a more broad reaching degree. This has helped prepare me for my early careers in railroading and my later career as an OEM manufacuring/ project engineer and more recently a Mining Process Engineer. I spent my summers and between semesters working at Sperry Rail's Danbury headquarters doing a variety of projects, some more railroad focused, some more general design focused. Later, after a stint as a Y2K updater (talk about easy $$), I tried to make a go of it at Strasburg. Too poor to keep up the commute, I moved on. After graduating, I joined NS's management team in the Mechanical dept. Found out that wasn't for me, and moved out of the industry. Point being, if I had a degree that was industry focused, my career path choices would have been severely limited. Interestingly, here in the mining industry, there are a few institutions offering a Mining Engineering degree (VT and CO School of Mines are the only ones that come to mind here in the states). While highly sought after by mines and mining equipment suppliers, I see my coworkers with that degree as somewhat limited in where they can go and what they can do.

Still, there is a lot to be said for the hands-on approach. Books and reading can only get you so far. It is the Doing that brings the understanding...

Just my (long winded mech engineer) 2c
Mark

Soon Michigan State will have a program too.

http://www.progressiverailroading.com/p ... p?id=11463