U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Railroad Administration, Office of Acquisition and Grants Services, RAD-30, 400 7th Street, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20590

A -- TEST AND EVALUATION OF IMPROVED RAIL DEFECT DETECTION TECHNOLOGIES SOL DTFR53-93-C-00001 DUE 031497 POC Contract Specialist, Christine Henderson, 202/632-3239; Contracting Officer, Elaine Duke, 202/632-3235 The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) intends to negotiate, on a sole source basis with the Association of American Railroads (AAR), the award of a new Task Order No. 120 under the subject contract for the purpose of investigative research on improved rail defect detection technologies. The AAR is the facility management contractor at the FRA's Transportation Technology Center (TTC) in Pueblo, Colorado. Task Order No. 120 will be a 3-year program supporting the development and operation of a new Rail Defect Test Facility at the 50-square mile TTC property. The TTC, which is managed and operated by the AAR for the U.S. Department of Transportation, is the only known facility with the unique capability and circumstances suitable for these highly specialized railroad test operations safely away from revenue service rail lines. The work will involve using conventional curved and tangent track segments to "host" testing on various actual rail flaws taken from revenue service, as well as on various fabricated flaws designed especially for test purposes. The work effort under this Task Order will be funded jointly by FRA and the AAR in a cost-shared arrangement. The applicable authority for this procurement action is 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1) as implemented by FAR 6.302-1, "Only One Responsible Source." This announcement is for information purposes only relating to potential subcontracting opportunities. Interested parties may contact the AAR/TTC contracts manager directly at (719) 584-0534 for any subcontracting information. This is not a competitive Request for Proposals (RFP) and a competitive solicitation is not available. See Note 22. (0041)

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