Welcome New Editorial Board Members

ATLANTA –– Railway Track and Structures is pleased to announce the addition of two new members to our Editorial Board. (From January 2026 RT&S.)

Strengthening The Leadership of Railway Track and Structures

Happy New Year to All! 

I hope that your holiday celebrations were gratifying, and you feel somewhat refreshed for the new year. I also want to acknowledge that I’m sure several of you didn’t find the holidays that enjoyable because of personal circumstances in your life. While the world casts the holidays as a time of joy and celebration, many folks are going through difficult times and are not in the holiday spirit. We wish you well and hope things improve.

On a brighter note, we’d like to welcome three new members to our Editorial Board –– David Clark, Director of Construction Engineering at CSX; Dan Hampton, Director of Contract Services at CSX; and Jeffrey Watson, Vice President of Engineering at Genesee & Wyoming. In 2025, David Clarke from the University of Tennessee and Scott Sandoval of Genesee & Wyoming, rolled off the Board and we thank them for their years of service. 

As a refresher, here is the complete Editorial Board, in alphabetical order: David Clark, CSX; Dan Hampton, CSX; Brad Kerchof, formerly of Norfolk Southern; Jerry Specht from CPKC/AREMA; Robert Tuzik, Talus Associates; Jeffrey Watson, Genesee & Wyoming; and Gary Wolf, Wolf Railway Consulting. We are very grateful to these folks for agreeing to serve on our Board, and their input is invaluable. We will continue to work with this group in the coming year to make RT&S stronger and even more relevant to the railroad engineering community. 

A special treat we’re introducing this year is a periodic section called “The Gildersleeve Files.” This is a series of historic railroad photographs that we will publish as often as we can, depending on space. Tom Gildersleeve is an engineer (not rail) but a longtime and devoted railroad enthusiast and photographer who has been photographing railroads since the 1950s. His works are spectacular and presented in RT&S with the permission of the custodian of these images, the Center for Railroad Photography and Art in Madison, Wisconsin. For those who read our November 2025 issue, you were treated to one of Tom’s most famous images on page 32, the American Freedom Train made just before dawn on December 22, 1975. Many consider this to be one of the most famous railroad photographs of all time. Below is another gem from Tom’s collection. 

Union Pacific’s City of Los Angeles still operated in two sections in 1964. Here we see the Pullman section climbing eastbound around Sullivan’s Curve in Cajon Pass on July 11, 1964. A Tuscan Red car from the Pennsylvania Railroad is visible in the train in the background. Photography by Tom Gildersleeve, collection of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art.