WASHINGTON – For 25 years, tech contractor SRA International has done high-level problem solving for the U.S. government. One of its first gigs: advising the Department of Defense on how to keep its operations running in the buildup to and aftermath of a nuclear exchange between the Cold War powers.

“People talk about the danger of a dirty bomb,” muses SRA Chief Executive Ernst Volgenau. “Can you imagine 1,000 Soviet nuclear warheads descending on the United States?”

Yes, SRA designs government computer networks and systems. And it would like to do more such work. But it also helps prepare government agencies for disaster and develops software and techniques for analyzing the effectiveness of civilian and defense programs. Example: In a recent engagement for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, SRA was hired to look for patterns in Medicare claims that might indicate fraud.

So far, this mix of business has served SRA well. Revenue, $450 million for the latest 12 months, has grown at a 15% annualized clip over the past five years. And given today’s national security situation, analysts expect more of the same; the Thomson First Call consensus forecasts SRA’s bottom line will expand at a rate of 21% (annualized) over the next thee to five years.

Yet even with that kind of projected growth, one might wonder whether SRA has sufficient bulk to compete, particularly as the giant defense contractors muscle into the field of government technology. Last week, Lockheed Martin announced a $1.8 billion bid for Titan, a San Diego-based technology-services outfit specializing in national security and defense.

Moreover, SRA has a reputation for being relatively selective about both the engagements it takes on and the acquisitions it makes. “They’ve had measured growth,” says Cynthia Houlton, equity analyst with RBC Capital Markets. “They haven’t gone out for large deal opportunities just to beef up the top line.”

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WASHINGTON – It’s not buggy whip time yet, but America’s railroad supply industry has sure seen better days. Thomas D. Simpson, executive director of the Railway Supply Institute’s Washington office, reports that only 17,700 freight railcars were ordered last year, down from 70,000 to 80,000 in the late 1990s. Meanwhile, locomotive sales have dropped to just 400 per year from 1,200. “It’s been a tough slog,” he sighs.

But happily for rail suppliers, Congress still loves trains. Several proposals for revamping the nation’s rail infrastructure are now chugging around the House and Senate. And RSI, whose members range from industrial giants like General Electric and ITT Industries to smaller rail equipment manufacturers such as Greenbrier and Wabtec, is trying to make sure one of those proposals becomes law.

“There’s some hard work in front of us,” says Simpson, “but we can get something, and getting something is key.”

Atop the RSI’s legislative wish list is to have Congress establish a “Rail Finance and Development Corporation,” modeled on government-sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. With a chief executive and a presidentially appointed board of directors, the entity would be authorized to issue $50 billion in federal tax credit bonds to states and private/public partnerships to finance rail projects. (Holders of these bonds get a tax credit, which provides an indirect federal subsidy for rail.)

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