William Walter Hay

William Walter Hay (1908–1998) was an American civil engineer and professor remembered with the annual American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association (AREMA) Hay Award recognizing outstanding achievements in railway engineering.

Early years William W. Hay was born in Bay City, Michigan, and completed a Bachelor of Science degree in management engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in 1931. After working briefly for the Pennsylvania Railroad, he undertook advanced coursework in railway operations at Yale University before returning to the Pennsylvania Railroad and later the Long Island Rail Road and Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant colonel with the United States Army Military Railway Service in both the European and Pacific theaters during World War II.

University of Illinois After working briefly for the Reading Railroad after the war, he joined the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty in 1947 and completed a Master of Science in Civil engineering in 1948. His Railroad Engineering textbook was published by John Wiley & Son in 1953. He was the Professor of Railway Civil Engineering from completion of his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1956 until he retired in 1977. He continued teaching as an emeritus professor until 1989. 1999: BNSF Railway – Thayer Blitz Project 2000: Amtrak – Northeast Corridor Improvement Project 2001: CSX Transportation – Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Capacity Improvement Project 2002: Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority – Alameda Corridor Project 2003: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and AirRail Transit Consortium – AirTrain JFK 2004: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – Restoration of PATH Commuter Rail Service to Lower Manhattan and Exchange Place, Jersey City 2005: TranSystems Corporation – Renaissance of the Kansas City Junction 2006: CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway – Hurricane Katrina Recovery Efforts 2007: Norfolk Southern Railway – Keystone Buildout Project 2008: Union Pacific Railroad – Grant Tower Realignment Project 2009: Union Pacific Railroad – Frazier Landslide Clean-up and Construction Project on the Cascade Subdivision in Oregon 2010: Norfolk Southern Railway – Heartland Corridor Clearance Improvement Project 2011: CSX Intermodal Terminals, Inc. – Northwest Ohio Intermodal freight transport Terminal Project 2012: BNSF Railway – Overcoming the 2011 Floods 2013: Utah Transit Authority – FrontRunner South Commuter Rail Line 2014: Union Pacific Railroad – Santa Teresa, New Mexico, Terminal 2015: Union Pacific Railroad and BNSF Railway – Tower 55 Multimodal Improvement Project 2016: TranSystems Corporation – Englewood, Chicago, P-1 Flyover Project 2017: Washington State Department of Transportation and BNSF Railway – Improvements for Passenger Rail Service and Reliability 2018: Arup – Fulton Center in New York City 2019: KiwiRail – Main North Line Earthquake Recovery Project in New Zealand 2020: Hanson Professional Services Inc. - Norfolk Southern’s Grand River Bridge Emergency Repairs in Brunswick, Missouri 2021: Canadian National Railway - Construction of the New McComb Bonnet Carré Spillway Bridge