(The following article by Elaine Bessier was posted on the Johnson County Sun website on April 7.)
JOHNSON County, Kan. — The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Technical Training Center at Johnson County Community College will soon begin training up to 20,000 more railroad employees annually.
BNSF Railway Company and the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association on Monday announced at the ASLRRA annual meeting and convention that the BNSF Training Center at JCCC will be the provider of choice for technical training for all short line railroad employees whose railroads are members of the ASLRRA.
The center already provides training to BNSF’s 38,000 employees via classroom, laboratory, simulator, distance learning and computer-based training. In 2004, more than 3,300 new BNSF employees and 1,525 existing employees received training at the 120,000-square-foot facility on the southwest corner of the JCCC campus.
Another 18,000 BNSF employees receive field training each year.
The additional students will all be new students, said Geri Christian, director of administration for the training center. She did not know exactly when the new students would begin arriving. “We will be taking over an additional seven classroom areas as of June 1.”
“We’re very excited,” said JCCC President Charles Carlsen. “Any time you can bring 20,000 employees to the Johnson County area, it will definitely have an economic impact in terms of hotels, meals and travel. It also reinforces our commitment to economic development and training and retraining employees, in this case, in the railroad industry.”
Carlsen said the college estimates that the current partnership of the college, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad and the city of Overland Park adds $50 million to Johnson County’s economic base annually.
BNSF arranges its own accommodations for the trainees, securing bids from local hotels, Carlsen said. Most of them stay for a week to two weeks.
The center’s current facilities will be adequate to accommodate the new students, he said. “It will require no new buildings. The welding program operates 24 hours a day.”
The training will include classroom instruction, simulated practice, computer-based training, Web-based training and distance learning. The employees will be trained in virtually every craft, including locomotive engineer, conductor, yard crew, mechanical, maintenance, engineering, signal systems and telecommunications.
Through its partnership with the college, BNSF also provides the curriculum for the National Academy of Railroad Sciences, which offers a variety of degrees in the railroad sciences and provides technical training to Alaska Rail, RailAmerica Inc., and Kansas City Southern. JCCC provides curriculum and instructors for the welding classes.
“We are pleased to provide the ASLRRA and its member short line and regional railroads with the highest level of academic and technical training excellence,” said Matthew K. Rose, BNSF chairman, president and CEO. “The railroad industry has made a concerted effort to adopt similar best practices and rule requirements in an effort to operate safely. BNSF is proud to have taken a leadership role in these developments and to share them with the rest of the industry.”