It's made possible thanks to a $3.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The two main areas the NURail Center will focus on is education and research which will help to improve railroad safety, efficiency of operations and reliability.

Lecturer, Riley Edwards, says, "On the education side we'll be increasing the number of course offerings not just here at this campus in Urbana-Champaign but at the other institutions. In addition we'll be focusing on advancing rail research which will allow us to increase both the depth and breadth of the current research programs that exist within the United States."

Research projects will address tracks and structures, train control, human factors and other topics. The primary theme of the overall project will be shared rail corridors.

He says, "As we have new, high speed rail stimulus money that comes to the United States it will better allow us to design those corridors to allow for both freight and passenger train operations on the same infrastructure."

The NURail Center will help U of I produce even more qualified rail engineers as well as have the ability to attract many more students with additional course offerings.

He says, "In addition we'll have more research projects so that invovled additional faculty in various departments and they need to hire additional students, graduate research assistants to conduct the research."

A Research Assistant Professor says the National University Rail Center will be a good argument as to why any future high speed rail in Illinois should make a stop in Champaign County.

Rapik Saat says, "We'll be addressing the ways to have a more cost effective high speed rail from Chicago to Champaign on the other side you see that one of our partners is University of Chicago so this will show the importance to have a good connection between these two campuses."

U of I has plans to operate the new center for at least two years but there is a good chance the program can be extended for up to five years.