Post Event Roundup

Our March Country Technical meeting was held in Newcastle and was again a popular and successful event. Special thanks to GHD for providing their venue for the meeting, and to LORAM for sponsoring the meeting

The event hosted 2 excellent presentations, one from LORAM and one from ARTC

Brad Elliott, Assistant Manager Rail Grinding from LORAM presented on Rail Grinding Performance and how it is measured across the wide variety of work and clients that LORAM service. Insight was given on the entire process, from why we need to profile rails due to the steel on steel interactions, to the different modes of rail grinding and the different finishes that can be applied to the various different scenarios they face. The presentation left everyone with a greater understanding of the challenges as well as capabilities when it comes to grinding, as well as a few new terminologies including GQI and wear rates

The second presentation of the night was from Agostino Carfi from ARTC, who presented on Designing Specialised Parts to Increase a Turnout Life-Cycle. This presentation covered a project completed where a one sided plate was designed to strengthen an area in a turnout that has been subjected to a number of catastrophic failures in recent times. The presentation covered everything from short term containments, design objectives and assumptions, prototyping, implementation and monitoring. The outcomes of the work has seen a component that was failing every 180 days now last more than 2.5 years in track and still counting (that’s a 5x improvement in lifespan)

Loram is a leading supplier of track maintenance, inspection services and infrastructure optimization services and equipment in North America and around the globe. With decades of maintenance of way expertise and experience, Loram provides comprehensive permanent way services to all Class I railroads and many short line, transit and commuter railroads.

Today, Loram leverages their accumulated data, analytics and maintenance algorithms. With advanced inspection technologies, Loram provides actionable intelligence with real-time monitoring and the most precise application of maintenance of way activities. In this new era of digital insight, interval-based maintenance is a thing of the past. Loram delivers on targeted, agile and data-driven solutions, offering unsurpassed efficiency, predictability and return on maintenance investment.

Presentation 1

optimising Rail Grinding Performance

Brad Elliot joined Loram in late 2025 as Assistant Manager Rail Grinding, leading contracts in support of two rail grinders used to deliver improvements across customer networks across NSW. He has over 20 years of experience spanning rollingstock maintenance, depot management, training and frontline management. Brad was previously employed with Sydney Trains and Pacific National as an Operations Manager and Team Leader for maintenance planning and service delivery. He combines his hands-on technical trade expertise with frontline management experience across NSW’s electric passenger fleet and Pacific National’s diesel loco operations.

Presentation 2

Designing Specialised Parts to Increase a Turnouts Life-Cycle

Agostino Carfi from ARTC. After discovering the root cause of repeat failures at a turnout, a novel solution was designed and implemented in order to prevent the failures from occurring – a one sided plate. Hear how the problem was addressed and implemented from concept, through design to installation, along with the lessons learnt through the project

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