Bucks County Community College to launch railroad safety training program in 2026

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Bucks County Community College is launching a railroad safety training program for emergency responders in the region and throughout the East Coast.

In partnership with the county, Rohm and Haas and Consolidated Rail Corp., or Conrail, the college’s program will provide hands-on simulations and hazardous materials training to firefighters, EMTs, police officers and other first responders who could be called on to respond to a train derailment.

“It is a model example of how industry and education and county government can work together for the betterment of the citizens,” said Tracy Timby, vice president for workforce and strategic partnerships at Bucks County Community College. “Regionally, the average number of derailments in this country a year is 1,000 and that’s an average … You only need one in your area to create devastation. So it’s being prepared for the emergency that we don’t see coming, necessarily.”

At a meeting Wednesday, the county Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to approve an agreement to allow Conrail to construct a railroad spur, or extension of an existing railroad track, behind the college’s Lower Bucks Public Safety Training Center. Rohm and Haas, a subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company, is donating at least two railroad cars for the program.

“We’ll be able to look at the anatomy of the rail cars and study those areas like that, which is important for responders,” Matthew Hatrak, executive director for public safety training at Bucks County Community College, said. “As they stated in the commissioners’ meeting, it’s not every day you can just go and get a rail car to turn over for you to be able to train on.”

Hatrak said the train derailment in 2023 that caused a chemical disaster and sickened residents in East Palestine, a town on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, was one of the key incidents that “spurred” their interest in establishing a railroad safety program.

“Things are going through our local municipalities that responders aren’t even 100% sure what it is,” he said. “So this training would allow them to understand what could possibly be coming through their local areas, to be better prepared … We just never know what could happen.”

The college still needs approval from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission and permits from Bristol Township to embark on the project. Timby said the college expects construction to begin in the fall, with the goal of starting classes in early 2026.

Timby explained that most first responders in the area currently have to go to Colorado for the “gold standard” in railroad safety training. The college is hoping this program will serve emergency personnel in Bucks County and throughout Pennsylvania, with their training as the “number one priority,” Hatrak said. But eventually, the college hopes the program will attract participants from throughout the East Coast.

The college’s Department of Public and Industrial Safety Training and Certification is the largest provider among the Pennsylvania State Fire Academy local-level training providers in Pennsylvania, Hatrak said. Staff currently travel across the U.S. and to Department of Defense bases to provide firefighter training.

Chair of the Bucks County Board of Commissioners Bob Harvie said the program will meet a critical need in the county and beyond.

“I’m assuming this will be something we’ll be getting people regionally, not just from Bucks County,” he said. “We’re going to get fire companies from all over, who are going to come here to do this. So that’s obviously not only good for public safety in general, but also for the community college and for Bucks County to be that place for people to talk about going and doing that.”