Students from seven area high schools met a UWM yesterday for a session on occupational ergonomics lead by Madiha Saeed Ahmed from UWM’s College of Engineering. The students are part of this year’s Zoo Train Engineering Challenge, will is focused on improving the coal handling process for the Zoo’s steam locomotives.
The current process is to manually sift coal into buckets which can weigh 90 pounds when full. These are carried down an uneven walkway along the tracks where they are staged until needed. When the train staff need to re-load coal for the train, the buckets are dumped into the train’s tender, through an opening that is close to four feet off the ground. Needless to say, plenty of issues to look at.
