Changing of the guard at Railway Track & Structures

Tom Judge, who has been Editor of Railway Track & Structures magazine since joining Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corporation in July 1998, will be retiring effective Dec. 31, 2010. Managing Editor Mischa Wanek-Libman, who has been with the publication nine years, will become Editor of RT&S and Engineering Editor of Railway Age.

“Over the past 12 years, RT&S has benefited tremendously from Tom Judge’s skill and experience,” said Simmons-Boardman Rail Group Publisher Robert P. DeMarco. “We thank him for his dedication to the magazine and to the railroad industry, and wish him a happy and healthy retirement. We’re also very pleased that Mischa Wanek-Libman will be assuming the duties of chief editor. RT&S will remain in very capable and experienced hands.”

Tom Judge (top left) began his railroading career in 1971 at the Chicago & North Western Railway, following service in the U.S. Marine Corps and a tour of duty in Vietnam. Prior to joining the Marines, he earned a B.A. in English from the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. He has been a Chicago resident since the age of six months. “The railroad industry has been good to me,” he said. “It was my father’s Illinois Central and Chicago, West Pullman & Southern paychecks that put food on the table and clothes on my back when I was growing up. After the Marines, I had the good fortune to find an opportunity at C&NW. In later years, I became a railroad journalist, first at another publication, then at RT&S and Simmons-Boardman. It’s been a fulfilling 12 years, and over the course of my career I’ve gotten to know many fine people in this industry.”

Mischa Wanek-Libman (below), a native of Grand Island, Neb., joined RT&S in August 2001 after graduating from Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, with a B.A. in Journalism & Mass Communications. “It’s an honor to take on the responsibility of chief editor of RT&S,” she said. “I look forward to building upon the relationships I’ve enjoyed for the past nine years, working with our industry’s railroads, suppliers, and trade associations.”

Railway Track & Structures is a monthly technical magazine designed to meet the information needs of the roadway and other civil engineering-related departments of North American rail freight and passenger operators. RT&S, published since 1905, covers the $10 billion business of building and maintaining railway infrastructure, including roadway and track, bridges and other structures, and wayside communications and signaling systems. The magazine is part of the Simmons-Boardman Rail Group, which consists of monthly publications Railway Age, RT&S, and International Railway Journal; the daily Rail Group News e-newsletter; and the Railway Educational Bureau.