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Platform Chats
Platform Chats
The Promising Future of the Rail Industry
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This episode, Walt sits down with AREMA President Vic Babin as they talk a little about the past and a lot about the promising future of the rail industry. Along the way, they’ll touch on the upcoming AREMA 2021 Virtual Conference, the silver tsunami, and Super Mario Brothers.
Well, I still think it's a it's a growth industry where things have changed a little bit, more people working at home, but there's still that need to meet in person. Uh people still will ride the trains. We we still need that transportation for energy efficiency. Uh people will use it for uh cultural events. Uh the of course the freight industry we continues to grow and uh it changes, of course, but uh I still see a lot of promise in the industry. I do see other things coming along, such as the hyperloop, but uh there will be always be a need to move people and and uh goods.
SPEAKER_01You may know the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance of Way Association, or AREMA, as the quote, keepers of the manuals. You may know them as the quote people behind the largest annual railroad conference in North America. You may not know about AREMA at all. This podcast is designed, no pun intended, to change your view of who AREMA is and how AREMA has changed the trajectory of many railway careers over its 100-plus year history. Welcome to Platform Chats with your host, Wick Lesser, where he takes a moment to discuss the impacts AREMA has had on the very people who are proud to be called members. Are you ready to roll with AREMA?
SPEAKER_00This episode is brought to you by Unabridged Structures. Unabridged Structures provides mentorship and advisement to emerging technologies and early stage companies focused on infrastructure. They have a proven track record of bringing technology solutions to the railway industry. For more on Unabridged Structures, go to Unabridged Structures.com.
SPEAKER_02Hello everybody, and welcome back to the next episode, episode seven, to be exact, of Arima's Platform Chats. I'm your host, Walt Lesser. I appreciate any and all of you that have made it from episode one all the way to episode seven. That means you keep tuning in because my guests are keeping you going. It's most likely not because of the sound of my voice, as we learned in the last podcast. I was outdone by one of my guests. Um tell you what, I know last time we made a big announcement about how we were the top 25 railway industry podcasts. I got a lot of feedback on that one. The message hotline lit up with people's just shocked that there were 24 other podcasts. Uh, we are currently ranked 13. I did get online this morning to see if we had moved up because uh iTunes almost shut down with the number of downloads of episode six. There were a lot of excited people that wanted to hear about committee 35. I could see uh I assured Apple that we were going to continue with these podcasts in a in a manner that did not hurt their infrastructure. Um they they were very supportive of how successful this podcast has been thus far. However, we are still 13. So either uh those ranks aren't moving fast enough, or I need to send a quick note to whoever's doing the ranking. Well, enough about that. Let's uh get to it. I had a little bit of a quick disappearing act again. I had a child here a couple weeks ago and needed to take a little break, but I have re-emerged and I am re-emerging with none other than the current Arima president, Vic Babin. His full name is Victor. We call him Vic. He has been the president of Arima. If you're not familiar, and Vic will probably get to this here in a minute, uh, he can explain how one becomes the president of Arima, what the term is, you know, how do you ascend to that? I think a lot of people would be interested to know the backstory uh outside of the scotch smoke and mirrors that are most likely involved. He can maybe debunk that. Uh Vic, welcome to the podcast. If you could just do a quick that doesn't even need to be quick, it's just you and me today. So uh why don't you give us a background of where you grew up and how you got in the industry and and let's finish off with how you became the Arima president.
SPEAKER_04All right, thanks, Walter. Great to be here, and uh congratulations on the new baby. I understand this is uh number two for you. Yes, it's wonderful. That's the blessings of life. So uh, you know, I went to college part-time. I went to uh Purdue, a local campus here in Hammond, Indiana. I've been in Indiana all my life. And uh I went part-time, took me more years than I care to remember to get my bachelor's degree. But uh while I was working there, I worked in uh electronic security for financial institutions. And um so I uh the president of that company and I formed another corporation, and I was designing um electronic devices for identifying bank clientele, you know, with the the uh entering pins and things like that. And uh I was also an adjunct professor at Purdue at the time, and uh looking to make a change, and I sold my interest in that corporation and uh went to work for the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District back in 91. They had just acquired a few years previously the South Shoreline Railroad, which uh runs from South Bend to Chicago. We have both passenger and freight. It's an electrified railway. We use an overhead contact system, and um all of the old engineering staff had left that railroad. There really wasn't anyone to learn from there. And uh REMA became a big resource for me early on, uh, looking through their manuals and learning about what we needed to do in all of the systems I worked on. We had some antiquated OCS and substations, and we had automatic block signaling at the time, still operated by timetable and train order. And uh everything that was there was you know put in probably during the Hoover administration. So you can imagine the condition of those. But uh I first got involved in um the AEI committee because I was looking for ways to identify trains for routing to automatically route them through gauntlet interlockings to uh for approaching a high-level platform. And uh so I worked with that for a while, and then later on, um Ernie Schuop and uh Melvin Clark approached me about some manual parts they were working on for impedance bonds, and they asked me to join, it was still AAR, then AER Committee E. So I got involved in E for several years, and then of course we became ARIMA Committee 37, and I was uh on committee for several years there, and then worked my way through uh you know subcommittee chair and uh then committee vice chair. Uh I think I was uh Rich Bowman was the chair at the time, and then uh, or Bowden, excuse me, and then uh became committee 37 chair and uh you know worked my way up through the ranks and then came up to uh um I was a chair from 2006 through 2012. Then I became a CNS director in 12 through 14, then a functional group vice president 14 through 16. That was the year I fell off the stage at the uh conference and landed myself in a hospital. Um, so I uh so uh then I moved on to uh governor in 18, senior vice president in 1920, and then uh president since last September, and about to become a past president next month at the end of the conference. So did you say 36? 37.
SPEAKER_0237, I'm sorry. Yeah, 37 is and what is that?
SPEAKER_04Uh signal systems.
SPEAKER_02Signal systems, and signal systems obviously will follow fall under CNS, which is communication and signals. So you were uh it sounds like you were a member of 37 for quite some time. I I actually am not familiar with uh committee E.
SPEAKER_04Well, that was uh that was AER Committee E, and then uh the CNS uh section left the AAR and became part of a REMA, the CNS functional group. So that uh that dates prior to 1997. I was on committee E. I think D was uh perhaps grade crossings, um similar pattern in number. It was the same committees, but they were renumbered when we became part of ARIMA.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay. So then you were on 37, put your time in there, started as a as a secretary, worked your way up vice chair, chair, then you joined uh the CNS group, functional group as I'm assuming a director, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, I started as a director when I, you know, I've and then uh went up to vice president from there of the functional group.
SPEAKER_02And how does one make that jump?
SPEAKER_04Well, it's just by by nomination. Um I think you know, I'd been I'd been very active in the committee, and I I guess the nominating committee recognized that uh you know I was committed to the industry and committed to AREMA, and uh they asked me if I would uh accept that position.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so there's a nominating committee that's uh keeping an eye on uh who is really putting in the putting in the blood, sweat, and tears, it sounds like, which is allowed you to be recognized for your efforts and be, if you will, promoted. And then I know that in that role, correct me if I'm wrong here, but you oversee or oversaw the uh basically all the chairmen and chairwomen of the committees, right? I remember at the chairs, uh there's there's a chairperson's meetings twice a year. Uh there's an individual at the head table driving the conversation around ballot material, etc., etc., correct?
SPEAKER_04Right. So the uh you know the directors work with the uh the um functional group VP to uh collect the collect the data and manage the committees and uh file the annual reports, etc., for the functional group. And and we do meet twice a year, and then uh we also handle the publications committee uh or or participate in the publications committee for the CNS functional group. Uh there are similar uh committees that handle the uh Manual for Railway Engineering.
SPEAKER_02There's a publication committee as well. And then as a president, it sounds like you get to have your hand in the strategic plan of over of Arima's overall strategic plan and the opportunity to put your fingerprints on it because I've been reading all of your message from the president articles that you've been writing for RTNS, which by the way, those are fantastic. Uh it's been allowed, it's allowed me to kind of follow you throughout the calendar year. And I mean, forever you will have your fingerprints on this organization through the creation of uh Committee 35. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, Committee 35 is our new uh information technology group. I think it's a bit overdue actually to get into that. We the CNS functional group had been handling much of information technology through Committee 39, but more as it applied to positive train control. And there are so many more IT applications on the railway and on the railway wayside that uh we felt it was time to explore that. Um, on my railroad, of course, we use a lot, we have a lot of IT applications uh for passenger service, the uh you know, the uh variable message signs, the ticket vending machines, the communications with uh uh Wi-Fi to the past for the passengers on the train. But we're seeing more and more IT getting into the uh you know the Internet of Things, uh, the wayside diagnostics and the big data applications. So I you know started to brainstorm a little bit about all of the different things that are needed, and talking with Jerry Speck, the uh functional group vice president for CNS, and working with Beth, and we put together a strawman and we uh put together several topics that committee is now has now formed. We have uh committee chairman uh Mike Weber and uh uh Robert Kramer is the vice chair, Clayton Payne is the secretary, and they have now formed put together their subcommittees. It looks like they've put together four, and uh covering all the various disciplines and the railroad specific IT applications. I spoke to Beth earlier today. We now have uh 26 committee members on 35, as well as the three officers, and I expect that to grow even more. And uh we have uh several of the CNS committees are meeting at in September at the RSSI conference in Indianapolis, so we'll be actively recruiting more there. And uh I I'm actually going to be there attending the attending to the ARIMA booth at the RSSI conference. And uh is that in person? Yeah, yes, it is in person. Okay, it's in uh Indianapolis. And the dates on that one, do you know, offhand? You know, that's uh that's the week prior to the conference. Okay. So uh I believe that's the week. I know that that's the Friday and Saturday.
SPEAKER_02Let's see, the conference is the week.
SPEAKER_04Or Thursday and Friday, excuse me.
SPEAKER_02So that would be the 1617, I believe. Does that sound right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, if that's the uh Thursday and Friday, I don't have a calendar for me at the moment. So yeah, the Thursday and Friday prior to the AREMA conference, virtual conference.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I had a fascinating discussion with uh Mike and Jerry about that uh committee on our last episode, and I can tell you, I mean, just by the sheer number of topics, I mean you I agree with you completely that this is probably should have been created five years ago, but it is what it is. It's here today, and I think that the just the variety of backgrounds that will make up that committee is gonna be staggering compared to some of the other niche committees that we have. Um, you know, steel bridges is gonna be people pretty well educated in steel design versus this, you might have applications for bridges and ballast and or not ballast, but you know, maintenance of way, and like you just said, all the passenger interactions and ticketing machines and electrification. There's just a lot there, and uh, you know, roughly 30 people so far. I I would not doubt that by the end of the year or so we're gonna be over a hundred people.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it could end up being one of the largest committees at Arima, and uh, I think it fills a void in the industry. I had talked, spoken with our IT professionals on my railroad and asked them, where do you go for your body of knowledge? And they really didn't have a sound answer to that. They and they talked to vendors, they talked to other friends in the industry, but they really didn't have a home for that body of knowledge. And this is what we're looking to provide through Committee 35.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'll be the first uh person to publicly, in a world-wide global setting, thank you for creating Committee 35 um on this podcast. So, with that, I'm gonna jump right into something I know you're passionate about. And it's something that got me kind of excited. And frankly, uh we've talked about having an episode of the podcast in the near future to deal with this uh topic in depth. But let's talk a little bit about the fact that the Hyperloop administrators, engineers, etc., reached out to Arima about, you know, the guidance in developing recommended practices for the construction of the Hyperloop. And frankly, and you and I joke about this, you uh for those that used to, or maybe still go to the bank and go to the drive-thru window and the uh little suction plastic tube machine. I think a lot of people believe that the hyperloop is a large version of that. And I don't believe that's the case, is it?
SPEAKER_04No, it isn't. There's typically there may be a vacuum involved, but the purpose of the vacuum is to reduce air resistance on the vehicles. So these vehicles are are going to be in a tube or in the, and they're operating in a vacuum, but they're using, at least in the some models, they're using maglev technology. And so we're traveling at a very high, actually at aircraft speeds, through a tube that can either be placed on the surface of the earth or it can be buried, or it could be um could be underwater, actually. And uh there was the first live movement, movement of passengers occurred in Nevada in the U.S. last fall, and I was uh honored to attend that virtually to see this take place. And uh it really took me back to my childhood watching the NASA launches. There was a countdown, and uh, and then some delays ensued, and then the countdown was resumed, and then the vehicle was launched, and uh it accelerated very smoothly, and uh and um I think it only reached around 100 miles per hour. It has the potential to get up in the I believe it's the 700 mile per hour range, but their test to test track wasn't quite that long long enough to support that, but it proved the technology. Um there are many similarities in this technology to what do we to what we do on railways. It's uh it's a fixed guideway. Uh there's going to be a need for meet and pass locations. Uh I'm sure there will be uh storage yards for the vehicles. There's going to be stations, platforms, uh, there will be a need for bridges and tunnels, uh needs for control systems. So I could see why they approached AREMA for this, and um also the the um United States DOT had decided that this the regulations for Hyperloop will be managed through the Federal Railroad Administration. So I think they recognize as well all of the similarities and commonalities with railways. So this is coming. I'm I'm convinced it is. There are efforts worldwide. It started as a competition probably about uh 2010, 2011, but we're now seeing it uh gain momentum worldwide, and uh I'm I believe it's going to come and sooner than we think.
SPEAKER_02Well, I think I'm excited about that in the sense that it does have commonalities in the industry that you and I happen to play in. I'm a little disappointed in that because I I always pictured it to be similar to the 1985 game Super Mario Brothers, where we could just jump in one of those green tubes and uh pop out somewhere where there's a lot of coins I could pick up, I guess. But this might be the next best thing. And I and the idea of traveling uh at aircraft speeds, it sounds to me like you're not gonna have a lot of stations in between you know uh endpoints, if you will. So if I'm gonna fly from Los Angeles to New York, I'm not gonna stop four times unless I bought a really cheap ticket. Uh so for this one, where are they looking to start? What what kind of distances are we talking about? LA to Vegas, or I i is there are there other locations that they're looking at?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think they're looking at uh, you know, L. LA to San Francisco and perhaps uh you know St. Louis to Kansas City, you know, some some of the common uh flight corridors, and and you're right, there won't be many stations, but it but it's an on-demand service rather than a scheduled service. So you appear at the station and and you wait for the next pod to come along, and the and the these pods just hold uh you know 20 or so people, and you board and and off you go. And uh so it it's a fixed guideway. Um so being that I I would imagine there's going to be need, as I said, for meat and pass planning and that sort of thing, unless there's you know uh multiple tubes, just like as we would have on any on many rail corridors, we'll have uh multiple tracks, and uh you know, so we can uh avoid some of the meat pass planning and make you know make the rail the hyperloop more efficient that way. Uh the system I've seen, I I think I included some photos of the system being built in Nevada. Uh you know, I don't want to be overly simplistic, but there's just support structures and uh and a length of pipe in between, and I would imagine there are some uh coils underneath that form part of the Mag Glove system. Um so uh I think it's all all very realizable.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it sounds like it. And it sounds like it's a uh sounds like it's something to get people, you know, of all ages excited again about potential uh greenfield uh construction in the sense that you know when you talk about the high-speed rail plan uh that was I saw rolled out in roughly 2008-ish, uh, you know, obviously there was a lot of brownfield there, right? Uh going in and and working on existing right-of-way and structures and and whatnot. Uh this one obviously has to be from the ground up construction. So, I mean, if you're a young person or someone in in school now, even you could make a career out of this if this really does take off. Uh, and a remain is right there to assist and or document uh some of the best practices.
SPEAKER_04And and I would I would also want to mention it's a very energy efficient form of transportation to the extent where some of the systems, I believe they're looking at one in Dubai that might even be solar powered. Um, of course, there's plenty of sunlight in Dubai, I would imagine, but uh uh very little energy because there's no air resistance. And uh so I I think it could very well be the way of the future, and uh you know a Rima should be there. We we we need to uh stay in front of the technologies, and I can see uh the Hyperloop folks learning a lot from us and and vice versa.
SPEAKER_02Cool, and I look forward to, yeah, I know we're talking about the potential podcast uh uh talking directly to uh some of the employees of the I believe the Virgin Hyperloop, and we're working on that. So stay tuned for that episode in the near future. But uh enough about the Hyperloop, let's talk a little bit about uh the big virtual conference that's coming up, and uh you are presiding over it, and I'm really sorry that similar to Ed Sparks, uh, you will not have the ability to do this in person. Uh, I know you're recording a lot of it. I know I was a part of a recording last week for uh one of the sessions, and I've been seeing a lot of the technical presentations are being recorded and submitted to headquarters. So I guess uh let's start with the the Vic Babin. Uh if you were talking to somebody right now that's thinking about going to the virtual conference, why should they go?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we have the general session on uh on Monday, the opening general session. And uh for keynote speakers, we're having a panel of industry experts from uh uh four commuter and passenger operations, uh Amtrak M uh MTA and uh uh My Railroad, Northern Indiana Commuter District's uh shoreline, and from uh LA Metro. Yep. So we'll have panelists speaking there.
SPEAKER_02I know that was a part of that, and they're gonna be talking a lot about uh the future of that. That was actually pretty fun. Uh, we recorded that about a week ago, and uh I could tell you I think everybody should tune into that one. They they talk a lot about the impacts of COVID and how that potentially has forever changed how we maintain railway cars uh from a cleanliness perspective. And we talk a lot about how they took advantage of maintenance of way, work windows, and and then there's some some pretty interesting things uh that kind of surprised me in the works uh in Los Angeles as it relates to the Olympics that are coming coming our way. So that was that was a lot of fun putting that together.
SPEAKER_04We will also have the Hay Award presentation, and uh we have uh activities for our student chapters, and we have uh entertainment again this year by the NS Lawman, and uh Tony Hatch will speak as he usually does during the closing session. That's always uh very exciting to hear Tony speak. He has an awful lot of uh knowledge and background of the industry trends and the markets and where we're going in the railway industry. Yep.
SPEAKER_02And are we gonna have a ver is there a virtual booth again where they have uh uh the different suppliers? I know they had that last year.
SPEAKER_04We will not have that this year. Okay. Yeah, that was we do have many sponsors though, uh opportunities to see some of their products.
SPEAKER_02I think of all the virtual stuff that we have seen since the shutdown, uh that was probably the biggest stretch. Uh, it's it's tough to recreate walking through a massive uh conference hall and talking directly to vendors who have you know maintenance of way equipment on display and different widgets and whatnot. That's just hard to reproduce. So I'm excited to get back to the in-person version of that. So after the so the conference is coming up soon. Um but more so, you know, I was reading through your most recent uh message from the president, and I guess I might have missed the memo, but you're you're not only done with being the president of Arima, you you're officially retiring from the railroad.
SPEAKER_04I did. I retired in June, actually. Okay. Doing a little bit of work, a little bit of consulting, not too much, you know, a couple days a month. Uh got got several other things going on in my personal life that uh so I haven't really felt quite retired just yet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I I'm as a railroader that's been like you said, I'll be ready if your phone goes off at 2 a.m. I I think you've lived the life of being on 24-7, so it's probably not an easy flip of a switch. And you know, we mentioned even in that uh, I'd like to get your take on this. We mentioned in the uh panel discussion about uh the silver tsunami, if you will, of of retirements of people like yourself. And you even mentioned that when you came to the railroad in 91, that you didn't have a lot of people to uh apprenticeship from and you had to go to Arima. And so I guess in the spirit of that, and and as the outgoing Arima president, um what what are you gonna tell a guy that is thinking about making that transition? Or let's talk to the Vic Babin of 1991. Uh, why would you encourage him to join Arima?
SPEAKER_04Well, it Arima would be the place to go to round out your career. It really provides a community for an engineer where you uh can grow professionally and and thrive by uh learning and networking and contributing to the railroad engineering uh profession and our the body of knowledge. Uh there's so much that's learned in both the committee just from talking about the recommended practices that we create and learning from your colleagues what they do on their properties. And and develop and it compels you to do a little bit of research for development on the parts that you may be working on as an assignment from the committee. And I wouldn't overlook the networking opportunities and don't miss the opportunity to have dinner with your colleagues there. There's a lot learned over uh over a meal and over a cold beer or just meeting in the lobby. It really fills out fills out that need for for a professional, rounds out the career.
SPEAKER_02I I could not agree with that more. If if you viewed uh kind of your career, your overall career as bricks, um, it's kind of the mortar, right? To kind of hold it together and round it out and and provide that. I don't know. You you're not gonna do anything really well when you do it in a vacuum. I I don't think so. I think that you gotta get out and talk to people. And and as we've been doing these podcasts, everyone has been coming up with that same thing. It's it's cool to hear that uh a lot of the people that I speak with are they keep coming back to the fact that going to these committee meetings are great and they learn a lot, but so many people have made basically lifelong friendships um by doing what you just said, by uh grabbing a cold beverage after the the committee meeting or dinner or going to uh a happy hour at the uh national conference, or it's it doesn't have to be a big thing. It doesn't have to be you know a party of 20 either. It can be just you and another person you connect with. And they just happen to have a they happen to oversee a railroad in California and you happen to oversee something in Georgia. So I couldn't agree with you more about that, and and I hope that we continue to see membership increase. Uh it's been a tough year though, Vic, you know, with COVID. Uh, how do you foresee things playing out in the future? I think that's kind of how I'd like to close this out. Is what do you think the future passenger rail looks like in this country? And I don't mean to get overly philosophical, but you know, uh, when do you think the railroads are gonna what what role are they gonna play as we move forward into the future, whether that's hyperloop or not?
SPEAKER_04Well, I still think it's a it's a growth industry where things have changed a little bit, more people working at home, but there's still that need to meet in person. Uh people still will ride the trains. We we still need that transportation for energy efficiency. Uh, people will use it for uh cultural events. Uh the of course the freight industry we continues to grow and uh it changes, of course, but uh I still see a lot of promise in the industry. I do see other things coming along, such as the hyperloop, but uh there will be always be a need to move people and and uh goods, and I think the future is still promising.
SPEAKER_02I I agree with you a hundred percent. I think that uh I if another I I keep going back to that that panel, but you're echoing you know the leadership of that panel. Not a single one of them seemed down and out about the future. Uh every one of them, every leader was excited about what the future held. They were excited about capital projects that are on the way. They were excited about the fact that it is a you just you just said it, you said efficient. It's a very green uh solution to moving not just heavy loads, but people. So yeah, I don't think this industry is uh anywhere near the end right now. And so I just want to tell you, Vic, thank you on behalf of everybody uh at Arima, everybody that's ever held a membership card. They have no idea, not everyone has any idea how much effort you've put into this and how much effort it takes just to the years of toiling that you have spent on committees from subcommittees to probably arguing about shall versus should, uh all the way up to uh to where you are now, which is overseeing the one of the largest uh conferences in North America. So uh I guess it's a bittersweet goodbye to you in the sense that you are departing and you are retiring. But thank you for leaving your fingerprints on this industry, Vic.
SPEAKER_04Well, I I'll be around. I I always look forward to uh seeing my friends at at conferences and meetings. It's it's like going home. And uh some of my best friendships are through ARIMA.
SPEAKER_02Well, if I'm lucky enough, I'm on that list somewhere, but you don't have to say that now.
SPEAKER_04Well, I will I know I will see you in Denver next year, right?
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's right, yeah. I I want to appreciate or I want to thank uh the organization for coming and setting up camp in my town just because I'm here, right? Isn't that what happened?
SPEAKER_04That's right. The 2022 annual conference, Denver, Colorado.
SPEAKER_02Perfect. Well, I know my wife's happy about that because that means I she's got uh tabs on me uh during the hospitality suites, if you will.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and then and that way you can get home and check on the kids once in a while, right?
SPEAKER_02That's that's exactly right. All right, Vic. Well, thank you for coming on to the show. You did a great job, and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to the audience. So with that, I will uh we'll see you personally in Denver.
SPEAKER_04I look forward to it. Thanks, Walter.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for rolling with Arima on today's episode of Platform Chats. For further information about Arima, please visit arema.org or contact us at info at arema.org.
