Exercise 8 Write an annotation to the above given text.

PART 3

My speciality

Do you like to travel? Of course! Especially if you travel in a modern and comfortable sleeping car. Would you like to receive goods in time and without damages? You are welcome! All these and many other things I’ll deal with in my future work.

It’s not a secret that railway transport plays a very important part in the development, both political and economical, of any country because it carries the greater part of freight and passenger traffic.

The railway system of our country is very complicated and I will do my best to become a highly qualified specialist and to keep the system working.

But it will be in the future and now I study at the Ukrainian State Academy of Railway Transport. It was founded in 1930 as the Kharkov Institute of Railway Transport Engineers and trains specialists for the railway transport. These specialists work at locomotive and car depots, at transport machinery plants, at car-building works, at designing institutes, at railway higher educational establishments as well.

I study at the Mechanical Department. The whole course of studies allows to train skilled railway mechanical engineers.

After graduating from the Academy I’ll deal with designing, constructing and repairing passenger and freight cars. All these cars have different structure. But irrespectively of their use they have many common elements – such as: a body, a frame, a bogie, running gears, draft gears, buffers and breaks.

A big railway system needs many varied types of carriages and wagons.

The passenger rolling stock consists of modern all-metal coaches of different types: first and second class carriages with four berths, first class two-berth carriages, interregional type of carriages equipped with soft reclining seats, comfortable carriages for international traffic and driving carriages for electric and diesel-powered trains. There is also a fleet of restaurant cars, parcel vans and metro cars for urban transportation.

Designing passenger vehicles the engineers try to obtain maximum comfort for passengers (increase in running speed, reduced vibration and noise) and considerable improvements in ventilation and interior.

The railway system of our country is equipped and being constantly supplied with new high-capacity, multiple-wheel freight cars. These cars with automatic coupling and automatic breaks ensured high-speed haulage of heavy trains.

The freight rolling stock consists of box-cars, open box-cars, flat-cars and many other different kinds of special wagons.

Box cars are employed to transport products requiring protection from weather. Open box cars are employed to transport materials that do not require weather protection. Flat cars are used to carry heavy machinery parts, steel rails, logs and beams.

Special wagons are intended for transportation certain kinds of freight. There are various types of such wagons, namely: self-discharging wagons for freight in bulk, bucket wagons for carrying bitumen, wagons for heavy and bulky loads, covered wagons with two decks used to carry livestock, double-decker wagons for carrying motorcars, the mechanically refrigerated wagons intended for carrying frozen goods and refrigerator wagons for carrying perishable foodstuffs.

There are also open-top hopper cars suitable for transporting special goods which are not affected by atmosphere conditions, covered-top hopper cars used to transport granular materials requiring weather protection and tanker wagons for carrying different kinds of liquid freight, petroleum products, cement, liquefied gas.

The solution of railroad problem which has given the most positive results is the transportation of freight in containers.

Generally they can be loaded on ordinary flat wagons but there is a special category of containers which require specially adapted wagons. Containers not only protect the most delicate products but also reduce the cost of transport equipment during loading.

The most important task facing railway transport industry in the field of car building is to improve the structure of rolling stock, to organize the production of specialized railway cars and cars for electrified trains.

To cope with all these problems and tasks our railways need highly qualified engineers.

Study the following words and combinations:

Exercise 1 Answer the following questions:

1. What higher educational institution do you study at?

2. What speciality will you get after graduating from the Academy?

3. Where do the graduates of our Academy work?

4. What do the passenger rolling stock consist of?

5. What do the engineers try to obtain while designing passenger vehicles?

6. What do the freight rolling stock consist of?

7. What kinds of special wagons do you know?

8. What are they used for?

9. What is the most important facing railway transport industry?

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