U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Railroad Administration, Office of Acquisition and Grants Services, Mail Stop 50, 400 7th Street, S.W., Washington, DC 20590

66 -- WHEEL/RAIL FORCE MEASURING DEVICES FOR HIGH SPEED RAILROAD RESEARCH CAR SOL DTFR53-00-I-00020 DUE 061900 POC Robert Carpenter, 202-493-6153; Illona Williams, 202-493-6130 The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has acquired one of the original Metroliner passenger cars from Amtrak to be reconditioned and equipped for conducting research at speeds up to 160 mph. The car is currently undergoing renovation in Wilmington, Delaware. After refurbishing, the car will be used by FRA's Office of Research and Development to conduct track research and track-train dynamics studies on the Northeast Corridor from Washington, DC to Boston, at the FRA's high speed test track within the U.S.Government's 52-square mile Transportation Technology Center near Pueblo, Colorado, and at other locations around the United States, as needed. These studies will support further development of high speed track and passenger equipment standards, and will allow measurement and analyses of wheel/rail behavior at speeds 90-160 mph. FRA now desires to purchase wheel/rail force measuring devices along with related components to be used on this research vehicle. The required force measurement system mustinclude all hardware and software needed to acquire continuous, real time wheel/rail force and contact position data at speeds up to 160 mph. The system must be able to collect longitudinal, lateral and vertical wheel/rail forces as well as wheel/rail contact position for each wheel of the rail car truck. The system also must be compatible for integration with the computer and data collection/output network system for measuring track geometry currently being installed onboard the Metroliner car. Parties interested in supplying the necessary complete wheel/rail force measurement system must be able to demonstrate their experience and capabilities in supplying devices that can measure wheel/rail forces at a sample rate to exceed 250 samples per second. The desired measuring device must be able to measure forces independent of changes in temperature, wheel/rail contact position, wheel rotation, and in the following ranges: VERTICAL 0 lbs <F Vert <40,000 lbs: LATERAL -40,000 lbs <F Lat <40,000 lbs; LONGITUDINAL -15,000 lbs F Lon <15,000 lbs. The requirement for accuracy will be not more than the following: VERTICAL Error Margin <10% for F Vert >1,000 lbs and Error Margin <200 lbs for F Vert <1,000 lbs; LATERAL Error Margin <5%; LONGITUDINAL Error Margin <10%. Wheel/rail forces traditionally have been measured with instrumented wheel sets. FRA is now interested in determining whether other new and potentially superior technologies are available to fulfill this requirement. Following receipt and analyses of the desired expressions of interest, FRA will determine whether to issue a procurement solicitation solely for instrumented wheel sets or a solicitation that could include some other technological systems. The anticipated resultant contract will be a supply type contract, NOT an experimental/developmental R&D project. The contractor will be expected to apply and adapt off-the-shelf technologies and components to supply the required system for wheel/rail force measurements. NOTES: 1. IN ORDER FOR FRA TO ASSESS THE POTENTIAL VIABILITY OF CONTEMPLATED TECHNOLOGIES OTHER THAN INSTRUMENTAL WHEEL SETS, EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST FROM PROSPECTIVE OFFERORS SHOULD CONTAIN THOROUGH AND COMPREHENSIVE DESCRIPTIVE INFORMATION ON THE PARTICULAR TECHNOLOGY AND RELATED CORPORATE EXPERIENCE IN THE DEVELOPMENT AND/OR APPLICATION(S) OF THE SYSTEM SUGGESTED FOR FULFILLING THIS REQUIREMENT. 2. This is NOT a Request for Proposals or an Invitation for Bids, and a solicitation for the anticipated procurement is NOT available. 3. Please disregard all other similar synopsis versions published since May 25, 2000 for this same project which contain text omission errors due to malfunctions of the Electronic Posting System (EPS). The EPS was not used to send this particular synopsis version to the Commerce Business Daily (CBD). Posted 05/30/00 (W-SN459807). (0151)

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