INTRODUCTION TO HIGHWAY AND RAILWAY
ENGINEERING
ENGR. RAZON C. DOMINGO
WHAT IS HIGHWAY ENGINEERING?
A branch of civil engineering that includes planning, design, construction,
operation, and maintenance of roads, bridge, and related infrastructure to
ensure effective movement of people and goods.
Highway Engineers study the traffic volumes and patterns to determine the
best strategies to minimize traffic, prevent collisions and also limit damage
to the road structures caused by the passage of vehicles. Highway
Engineers also design highway systems with the aim of optimizing traffic
flow and safety for all vehicles that travel through them.
WHAT IS RAILWAY ENGINEERING?
Railway Engineering involve the design, construction, maintenance and
operation of trains and rail systems (monitoring and controlling the rail
network and the trains).
BRIEF HISTORY OF HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION
HARRAPAN ROADS
Street paving has been found from the first human settlements around
4000 BC in cities of the Indus Valley Civilization on the
Indian subcontinent in modern-day Pakistan, such as Harappa and
Mohenjo-Daro. Roads in the towns were straight and long, intersecting
one another at right angles.
GREEK STREETS
4th or 3rd century BC - The Porta
Rosa was the main street of Elea.
The street is five meters wide and
has an incline of 18% in the steepest
part. It is paved with limestone
blocks and on one side there is a
small gutter for drainage.
ROMAN ROADS
The Romans built great roads
using deep roadbeds of crushed
stone as an underlying layer to
ensure that they kept dry, as the
water would flow out from the
crushed stone, instead of
becoming mud in clay soils.
BRIEF HISTORY OF RAIL TRANSPORT
ANCIENT RAILWAY SYSTEM
It all began in over 2000 years ago in
ancient civilizations of Egypt, Babylon
and Greece. Transport of people and
goods in those time was done with carts
that were pulled by animals (horses or
bulls) traveling on predetermined path.
The roads were constructed with pre-
built constraints for wheels. These were
the world’s first railway tracks, and
archeological remains of them can still
be found in Italy and Greece.
WOODEN RAILS (16TH CENTURY)
A minecart or mine cart (also
known as a mine trolley or
mine hutch) is a type of
rolling stock found on a
mine railway, used for moving ore
and materials procured in the
process of traditional mining.
METAL RAILS (18TH CENTURY)
In the late 1760s, the
Coalbrookdale Company
began to fix plates of cast iron
to the upper surface of
wooden rails, which increased
their durability and load-
bearing ability.
STEAM LOCOMOTIVE (EARLY 19TH CENTURY)
The first full-scale working
railway steam locomotive was
built in the United Kingdom
in 1804 by Richard Trevithick
, a British engineer born in
Cornwall. This used high-
pressure steam to drive the
engine by one power stroke.
ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE (MID-TO-LATE 19TH CENTURY)
The first known electric
locomotive was built in 1837 by
chemist Robert Davidson of
Aberdeen in Scotland, and it
was powered by galvanic cells
(batteries). Thus it was also the
earliest battery electric
locomotive.
DIESEL LOCOMOTIVE (LATE 19TH CENTURY)
Earliest recorded examples of an
internal combustion engine for
railway use included a prototype
designed by William Dent Priestman,
which was examined by
Sir William Thomson in 1888 who
described it as a "[Priestman oil
engine] mounted upon a truck which
is worked on a temporary line of rails
to show the adaptation of a petroleum
engine for locomotive purposes."
HIGH-SPEED RAIL (20TH CENTURY)
The first electrified high-speed rail
Tōkaidō Shinkansen (series 0) was
introduced in 1964 between Tokyo
and Osaka in Japan. Since then
high-speed rail transport, functioning
at speeds up and above 300 km/h, has
been built in Japan, Spain, France,
Germany, Italy, Taiwan(Republic of
China) ,the People's Republic of
China, the United Kingdom,
South Korea, Scandinavia, Belgium
and the Netherlands.
IMPORTANCE OF TRANSPORTATION
• Influence is economic, social and political
• Studied as a cultural, political and economic phenomenon.
HIGHWAY TRENDS
Current Focus:
o Infrastructure maintenance and
Emphasis shifting from the
rehabilitation,
construction of the mid-20th century
(e.g., US Interstate system, the o Improvements in operational
greatest Civil Engineering project of efficiency,
all time) o Various traffic-congestion relief
measures,
o Energy conservation,
o Improved safety and
o Environmental mitigation.
HIGHWAYS AND THE ECONOMY
15% of household income spent on vehicles
16 million new vehicles sold in the US annually
Vehicle industry $400 billion in vehicle sales
5 million jobs related to vehicle production and maintenance
Highways strongly influence economic development
HIGHWAY SAFETY
Highway safety involves technical and behavioural components and the
complexities of the human/machine interface.
