Peter LeCody

Peter is a Dallas business owner and serves as President of Texas Rail Advocates. He currently serves on the TxDOT I-20 Steering Committee. He served as Chair of Rail Passengers Association (formerly known as National Association of Railroad Passengers), based in Washington D.C. Peter served on the Texas Transportation Commission I-35 Corridor Advisory Committee and on the Steering Committee of the TxDOT Rail Division when it was formed. The Steering Committee was responsible for developing the State Rail Plan. Peter served on the City of Coppell Regional Transportation Task Force. He received the Champion of the Rails award from Amtrak President Joe Boardman. You can follow him on twitter @railadvo.

Taylor Sharpe

Taylor Sharpe is an founding Board Member with Texas Rail Advocates. His responsibilities at TRA include maintaining the membership database, conference registration, and newsletter communications. Professionally Mr. Sharpe is President of TMS Software, LLC, a Texas based custom business software development provider. Mr. Sharpe has a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas in Austin. Previously Mr. Sharpe was an environmental engineer for a US Government agency and a project engineer for a European based oil company at a polypropylene plant. For fun, Mr. Sharpe likes to snowboard, play ping pong, and ride electric unicycles.

Joshua D. Coran

Mr. Coran was born and raised in the Boston, Massachusetts, area. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Katz School of Management, University of Pittsburgh. He has been a Registered Professional Engineer in Illinois since 1976.

Mr. Coran has worked in the railroad and railroad supply industry exclusively since 1966. He has worked for the New York Central, Illinois Central and Alaska railroads, having been Chief Mechanical Engineer of the latter for 21 years. He was Chief Mechanical Officer of Trinity Railway Express from 2004 to 2007. He has also held positions with Westinghouse Electric's Transportation Equipment Division and the passenger division of Pullman-Standard, where he was Manager of Manufacturing Engineering.

Since the beginning of 2008, Mr. Coran has been Director of Operations at Talgo, Inc., the Seattle based subsidiary of Patentes Talgo, SL, of Spain.

Karl Ziebarth

Karl Ziebarth is a professional transportation consultant, assisting investors and lenders to rail, truck, and port enterprises. With a lifetime of experience, he advises on strategic options, translates what is happening on the ground into financial data, and can demonstrate to lenders and investors the range of outcomes from their investments. He serves a variety of clients, domestically and internationally. Karl was an executive with the KATY Railroad.

George Blount

George has been active in rail transportation issues for several decades in the Southwest.

John Radovich

John is one of the founding board members of Texas Rail Advocates. He runs Johns Cars, a Dallas-based company and owns a number of ex-Amtrak passenger cars.

Bill Glavin

Bill Glavin joined the Board of Texas Rail Advocates in 2021. He has over 35 years of experience in the rail industry and served as the first Rail Division Director at the Texas Department of Transportation from 2009 to 2015. Bill has worked for Burlington Northern Railroad, North American RailNet and Bridgefarmer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Johns Hopkins and a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Michigan State and is licensed as a professional engineer in Wisconsin and Texas.

Bruce Ashton

Bruce joined the Texas Rail Advocates board in 2019. He lives in San Antonio and is a Division Leader for D.C.-based Rail Passengers Association

Curtis Garrison

Curtis has a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and has worked at corporations such as Northern Telecom (Nortel Networks), Worldcom, EDS, and Apple. While at Nortel, Curtis was Project Manager and Creative Director for the first Official Dallas Cowboys web site and developed special projects for the Indy Racing League.

Mark A. Martin

Mark is a Professional Engineer with over 35 years of project management, design, and construction experience in the railroad, transit, and highway industries. He has been instrumental in designing and developing transportation systems that integrate freight rail, commuter and intercity rail and highway facilities. He has worked with railroads, transportation authorities, and DOTs in developing efficient and economic freight/LRT/commuter/intercity rail systems. He was born and raised in Fort Worth and graduated with a BS in Civil Engineering from Texas Tech University in 1984. He served as design PM and Construction Manager on the BNSF/Union Pacific Tower 55 Multimodal Improvements project in Fort Worth. He has been a member of Texas Rail Advocates since 2005.

Joy Smith

Joy retired from Amtrak with 40 years of service. Her last post was as Superintendent of Passenger Services at Amtrak 's Chicago base. She was a driving force behind TEMPO (Texas Eagle Marketing and Performance Organization), the grass roots organization that helped save and promote Amtrak's daily Texas Eagle service. Joy championed passenger rail progress across the Southwest for more than 15 years, particularly for stations in East Texas.

Brian Royak

Brian has been working in the railroad industry for the past 8 plus years after serving active duty in the United States Coast Guard and still remains a reservist.. Previously, Brian was in IT for nearly 20 years in Cleveland, Ohio. He played college football at Ashland University and attained his Bachelor Of Science Degree from Cleveland State University. Brian has been a member of Texas Rail Advocates since 2020.

Jeffrey Wendt

Dr. Jeffrey Wendt is a lifelong transportation enthusiast with over 30 years in the logistics industry. For the past 12 years, Jeffrey has shifted to academics and is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of North Texas- Dallas in the Supply Chain program. Jeffrey has a DBA in Supply Chain Management, a master's in both Logistics Management and Supply Chain Management and is currently pursuing a master's degree in Logistics Systems Engineering.

Chris Taylor

Christopher Taylor brings 30 years of experience in the planning and design of railroad projects to Texas Rail Advocates. His experience covers right of way, infrastructure, stations, systems, and operations for rail and transit projects from the planning stage through to final design and construction support. He has been a long time supporter of TRA and has presented at our annual conference three times through the years.

Chris works for Arup US, Inc. in Dallas TX and serves as project manager and lead engineer for railroad station and infrastructure projects. He has managed large teams in the development of detailed design and procurement packages for various civil, right of way, stations, facilities, and trackwork design projects. He has also led engineering for many major transportation planning projects, coordinating engineering efforts with operations, systems, planning, and environmental analyses.

Some notable projects he has served as Lead Engineer for during planning and preliminary engineering include Texas Central High-Speed Rail here in Texas and the Second Avenue Subway and Fulton Center in New York City. Chris has been active in HSR planning and design for nearly 15 years and worked closely with Amtrak to develop their concepts for true high-speed rail between Washington, D.C. and Boston, MA as published in “The Amtrak Vision for the Northeast Corridor.” Chris also has extensive experience in final design, including expertise in the design of flood mitigation and resiliency improvements for rail infrastructure and facilities. He led design development for numerous projects to restore railroads and protect them from future events including in response to Super Storm Sandy and Hurricane Irene.

Chris moved to Texas in 2015 and lives with his wife Patty in Ellis County. His three adult children all relocated to Texas with them. Chris and Patty are now happy to have three Texas born grandsons.