News

National Rail Car Training Consortium Hit a New Milestone with 2nd Meeting in Boston

Posted October 2016

The National Rail Car Training Consortium (the Consortium) hit a new milestone with its second in-person meeting in Boston last week. Jeff Gonneville, Chief Operating Officer of MBTA welcomed the group and stressed the importance of the consortium’s work within the industry.

Since the March meeting in Charlotte, the Consortium has grown to 15 transit rail locations, including the latest addition of LA Metro, Chicago Transit Authority, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), and Washington Metro (WMATA). By the end of November, the SME courseware development teams led by the Center’s Instructional Systems Designers will complete development of six rail car maintenance courses focusing on HVAC and APS/Battery Systems, complete with Participant Guides, Instructor Guides, classroom PowerPoint presentations, exercises and quizzes, pre and post-assessments, and instructional videos.

Participants agree that the Consortium has the advantage of:

  Addressing critical skills gap from retirements of current workers and expansions of rail service
  Leveraging resources and subject matter expertise from 15 transit rail locations for national standards-based courseware development
  Constantly updated w/new rail technologies
  With federal match in first two years, each agency pays only 1/30 of the cost of deliverables
  Proven record of cost savings from quality in-house maintenance work and improved State of Good Repair (SOGR)
  Building agency internal training capacity through Train-the-Trainer, mentor training and other local technical assistance
  Exchanges of ideas and training resources on a national platform

Current Rail Car Training Consortium Members

For more information:

  Courseware Samples on Transit Training Network
  The Center’s Facebook Page
  Contact Deputy Director Xinge Wang