Use of Railroad ROW's for Burried Cables

Over the years CSX has turned a pretty penny from allowing Sprint and other telecom providers to bury cable along various segments of their right of way.  In addition to the telecom carriers paying rights fees to bury the cable, the must also provide a number of channels on the cable for the carriers use.  I have no idea of the $$$$ of the contracts nor how many channels are made available to the carrier.

Many (but not all) rail lines in this area - eastern Pennsylvania - have either Fiber Optic Lines or some other kind of communications line buried along them.  Locally, the NS 'Reading Line' from Allentown to same has an ATT FOL along it, usually on the northern side of the ROW.  As Don said, there's one along the NS line from Altoona to the west, including throiugh the Horse Shoe Curve area.  Even the rinky-dink 7-mile Boyertown/ Colebrookdale Branch from the former Reading main in Pottstown, PA had one, if I recall correctly.  As best as I can recall, the revenue from that one was fairly minimal - maybe $1,000 to $2,000 per mile per year, or in the $10,000 to $15,000 range annually.

About 10 years ago National Public Radio had a fairly long segment on how the Internet/ FOL lines were following the old railroad ROW's - even abandoned ones - because they were the best was to seamlessly link together communications nodes that are far apart.  I laughed out loud at that - ''What's old is new again'' - and that ROW asset continues to be ever-valuable. 

I don't believe that any railroad owns its own cable-plow cars - they're all privately owned.  One of my co-workers saw one in the Allentown Yard a few weeks ago, and I got a really crummy photo of it.  But a little research from that yielded even better photos of such a car - MPCX 202, of  Michels Corp. from Brownsville, Wisconsin  - and a website, which are linked below.  The captions indicate that this cable plow equipment was in the Tamaqua, PA area - coal regions - on the Reading & Northern in that May 2010 time frame, so this kind of operation is still on-going.  Also, 2 of the photos linked below are from Nov. 2009 on the NS 'Lehigh Line', which is generally just over the border in central New Jersey.  This outfit appears to have several such cars.  I'll bet it gets real interesting when that huge steel plow - being pushed or pulled by a couple of 150 or 200 ton locomotives, and totalling maybe 1,000 tons of train in slow and steady motion - encounters a large rock, rock ledge, or old concrete foundation at a couple miles per hour . . .

Cable plow car MPCX 202 - 'wedge' photo angle - note the blade-type plow -

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2069353

Same, in a full side view -

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1863262

MPCX 5117 - cable/ conduit 'spool' car, with loaded spools, side view -

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1863250 

Index to all photos of MPCX equipment on that website -

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=MPCX 

Website for Michels Corp. - Communications division -

 http://www.michels.us/michels-us/Home/Divisions/MichelsCommunications/tabid/62/Default.aspx 

From their ''Timeline'' webpage -

1983

Twenty years after the completion of its first telephone cable job, Michels becomes one of the very first contractors involved in the construction of fiber optic cable systems in the United States.  Michels develops unique methods and builds customized equipment for completing this type of construction. Notable examples of this are Michels’ design and fabrication of several rail-mounted cable plows. Today, Michels Communications is one of the largest design and outside plant construction telecommunication contractors in the United States.

See also this webpage for some photos of their locos from about 8 years ago -

http://davecathell.tripod.com/en.html

- Paul North.   

The cable plow looks like it was rebuilt from a Jordan Spreader.  In addition to buried cables, it's not too unusual around here for pipelines to share the right-of-way.  Around Dolton Crossing on the IHB, you can see the markers for the cable lines and a couple of pipelines on the IHB right-of-way.

I don't know that it's available publicly, but a look at Level 3's Western United States node map would show that their stops from Chicago to the West coast are quite familiar. Chicago to SF via Omaha, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City? Chicago to LA via St Louis? Chicago to Seattle via the high line?

Level 3 by the way is the largest provider of network backbone services in the US. They own the most fiber optic cable having bought up a number of smaller operators.

Railroads are basically the only option when you need to run something east to west across the country in an unbroken line.

See this article from the New York Times, though mainly written around the Florida East Coast's venture into it:

New Life for Old Railroads - What Better Place to Lay Miles of Fiber Optic Cable - By JANE TANNER - Published: May 6, 2000, at -

 http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/06/business/new-life-for-old-railroads-what-better-place-to-lay-miles-of-fiber-optic-cable.html?pagewanted=all 

The article also mentions Norfolk Southern's 'T-Cubed' subsidiary - see:

http://www.t3inc.com/nsctcubed/T-Cubed/ 

and a stylized 'Network R-O-W' map at:

 http://www.t3inc.com/nsctcubed/T-Cubed/Network%20Right%20of%20Way/ 

- Paul North. 

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Thanks, for the responses,Guys!

The pictures Paul North provided, look very similar to the equipment that I recall seeing in Georgia. Unfortunately,

 I may have gotten some of the details fogged up in the recall.

What I found in one of Paul North's links was a story that Quest Communications had recently merged with another Comm Company, Century Tel from Monroe, La. And the Pictures of the Michaels Corp equipment that Paul North had linked, looked very similar (I guess I misspoke about the OxYolk Air Cleaner on the one engine).   But without knowing the 'rest of the story' my guess is at some point Qwest had sold its cable train off to another cable installer (?).

According to one piece of info Qwest has somewhere around 173,000 miles of lines. And there were several scattered comments that the ablity to lay cable along the rail lines was beneficial to both carriers, as the income was quoted as being something between $1K and $2k per mile per year.

Not a major income resource, but sure would help to pay part of the light bill!     Thanks, for the responses!

It should be noted that the stuff on the reels is likely duct - the fiber optic cable will be pulled later.  They really don't like to splice fiber any more than they have to, and that might happen if they hit an obstacle.

Another use for old railroad lines is public utilities - our local development authority laid a water line along the long abandoned line from Cape Vincent to Glen Park (Watertown) - the original mainline of the Rome and Watertown.  Apparently the line hadn't reverted back to original owners, or else they did a lot of negotiating....

Qwest began life as Southern Pacific Telecom.  Just sayin'.

Yep - via the 'Sprint' moniker and variations for a while.  For one explanation, see - http://www.tscm.com/phone/sprint.html 

See also http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Qwest-Communications-International-Inc-Company-History.html under the heading "SP Telecom Builds Telecommunications Lines:1988--95", where it says in part:

"It should be noted that SP Telecom was not the first successful telecommunications spin-off from Southern Pacific. Earlier, the railroad giant had created and sold another subsidiary that later became Sprint Corp. (the first two letter in Sprint were taken from its parent's name)."

- Paul North. 

New to the site, just stumbled across it this morning. Lot's of great info here. Thought I would chime in.

We developed our first rail plow in 1987 using a modified Jordan Spreader. Later models we developed have improved on that design.

 The use of rail plowing was very common in the late 1980's and throughout the 1990's, covering thousands of miles. One of the advantages for the Telco in using RR rights of way is the corridor is far more secure and less impacted by road move activity. Rail plowing virtually came to a halt in late 2001 when the telecom sector crashed. Most of the rail plowing activity was performed by contractors such as Michels. SP (Qwest) built their own plows in about 1999 or 2000. Michels purchased that fleet from Qwest in 2004.

Our current plows are capable of plowing 15 feet from the center of the tracks at depths up to 60 inches. Plows are mounted on both sides of the carriage. More robust, heavier plows are used for pre-ripping rocky areas. If the rock cannot be pre-ripped, we use high rail excavators equipped with rock hammers. The reels you see in the photo's are HDPE duct, typically ranging from 1-1/4" to 2" diameter. We have plowed up to 26 duct at a time, but quantities of 1 to 8 are far more common. After the duct is installed, the cable is blown into the duct.

Hope this answers your questions.

Jerrod

samfp1943

Thanks, for the responses,Guys!

The pictures Paul North provided, look very similar to the equipment that I recall seeing in Georgia. Unfortunately,

 I may have gotten some of the details fogged up in the recall.

What I found in one of Paul North's links was a story that Quest Communications had recently merged with another Comm Company, Century Tel from Monroe, La. And the Pictures of the Michaels Corp equipment that Paul North had linked, looked very similar (I guess I misspoke about the OxYolk Air Cleaner on the one engine).   But without knowing the 'rest of the story' my guess is at some point Qwest had sold its cable train off to another cable installer (?).

According to one piece of info Qwest has somewhere around 173,000 miles of lines. And there were several scattered comments that the ablity to lay cable along the rail lines was beneficial to both carriers, as the income was quoted as being something between $1K and $2k per mile per year.

Not a major income resource, but sure would help to pay part of the light bill!     Thanks, for the responses!

Qwest probably put their name on that cable laying train for advertising, but it almost certainly was owned by a contractor like Michels/Henkels & McCoy/etc. However,I do know that at one time SP owned a construction subsidiary (Southern Pacific Construction Services) that operated at least one cable plow train. I recall seeing a photo (years back in Extra 2200 South,IIRC) of a GP-9 lettered for the subsidiary that was power for the plow train. That may well have been back when they still owned SPRINT...

I've seen it claimed that the owners of Guilford transportation(Now Pan American Rail) would have sold the RR long ago were it not for the revenue generated from the fiber optic lines using their ROW..

Websites of a couple of other contractors with rail mounted plows:

http://www.danella.com/c/@OewzVAl1NxTWc/Pages/equipment.html

http://www.engineersconstruction.com/services/plow.htm

The last one does a lot of work for Guilford...

I always found SPrint's commercials about being the "only completely fiberoptic network" amusing. They were the only complete network because they were brand new and already owned the right of way. AT&T on the other hand had perfectly serviceable Microwave towers and the like.

Michels Communications

  New to the site, just stumbled across it this morning. Lot's of great info here. Thought I would chime in.

[snip]

Our current plows are capable of plowing 15 feet from the center of the tracks at depths up to 60 inches. Plows are mounted on both sides of the carriage. . . . The reels you see in the photo's are HDPE duct, typically ranging from 1-1/4" to 2" diameter. We have plowed up to 26 duct at a time, but quantities of 1 to 8 are far more common. After the duct is installed, the cable is blown into the duct.

Hope this answers your questions.

Jerrod

First - to the site, Jerrod.  Hope you find it interesting - there's quite a diverse and informed bunch here, as you've seen.  Your information is also appreciated.

Second - so here's question for you, that occurred to me - a track MOW and ROW guy, who'd normally skeptical of anything within about 15 feet of a track because of the potential for future complications - over lunch: 

How do you handle/ what do you do when the plowing operation encounters a diverging track ?  By that, I don't mean a passing siding or parallel track, but instead a track that goes way beyond the 15 feet from the track you're on, such as a true branch line or an industrial spur into a factory or plant, etc. ?  I suppose the same would be true of road crossings, intersecting or crossing tracks, etc.

I anticipate that the plow would stop and retract/ lift up as it approaches the diverging track, move across it without plowing, and then lower and resume plowing on the far side.  I expect that the duct is cut on each side of the obstacle.  Later on, someone comes by with a boring machine or 'mole' of some kind to connect the 2 plowed trenches on each side, and then inserts a segment of the duct through that area  with couplings, splices, fuses, or otherwise, etc. to connect to the ducts on each side so as to form a continuous duct.  I could see where a junction box of some kind might be used for that - or not, since it might not be any different than just splicing two spools of the duct together as has to be normally anyway.  Is that basically correct, or is there more to it than that ?

For undergrade bridges, I can see hanging the duct off the side some way.  Overhead bridges might be a challenge, depending on how far back the abutments are - I doubt if you bore through them, with like 20 feet of cover above the line ?  I'm sure there are others that you're familiar with.

Also- can you comment on how often such lines are damaged by derailments ?  If it's real major and the ground is soft, I can see the derailed and 'jack-knifing' cars and locomotives maybe digging into the ground far enough to snag those lines once in a while - correct ?

Thanks in advance for any further insights you can provide.

- Paul North. 

Welcome Jerrod.  Interesting insight.  I've seen your facility near Byron Hill a couple of times and wondered "What the heck do they do?" and this thread just answered that. 

Roughly what does it cost per mile to have lines buried by your crews?  Thanks in advance.

Your assumptions are correct. When the plow comes to an intersecting track, road crossing, intersecting signal wires, etc the plow is pulled out of the ground. Most of these areas are then directional bored. In the case of a track crossing, these are bored at a depth of 10' below the tracks and sleeved with an HDPE or steel casing large enough to accomodate the smaller ducts. The "tie-ins" are completed using duct couplers.

Junction boxes (handholes) are typically placed below grade at intervals of 2,500 to 5,000 feet. These serve as assist points for the cable installation, slack storage boxes, and storage for splice points. The fiber optic cable reels are typically 15,000 to 20,000 feet in length.

Bridge attachments are commonly used. These are typically a galvanized steel "A" bracket that is welded, bolted, or mechanically connected to the bridge. Bullet resistant fiberglass or steel pipe is placed in those brackets and the ducts pulled through those pipes. If sufficient clearance is available, this method is sometimes used in tunnels as well.

Derailments do occasionally affect these lines. I haven't seen any studies on the frequency of outages on RR right of way (row) vs public row but would have to guess that damages are far more frequent on public row based solely on greater exposure within public row. We assisted a carrier on a derailment outage several years ago. The area had gotten 14" of rain in a 24 hour period. A large culvert under the tracks had gotten clogged with debris, causing the water to seep around the culvert, eventually the whole culvert washed out, leaving the tracks suspended with nothing under them. A single locomotive with about 6 cars came through at about 1:00 am, all of which derailed. The engine took out the fiber optic line, which was buried about 4 feet deep. A temporary cable was strung out on the ground and spliced in to bypass the damaged section. A crew was dispatched later to bury a new line in that section with a conventional crawler tractor.

Jerrod:

     Thanks for jumping in here. This is pretty interesting stuff. 

My recollection of the cable aying train went back some years, and I was wondering how long has Michaels Corp been doing this type of installation?

And I'm really curious about the train itself. Do you still operate the locomotives, and have you any ideas aas to their pedigrees? 

Were the two ever part of the Qwest Operation? 

Did Michael's purchase them to use specifically on your operation from a railroad, or someone else?   

I'd guess the technology is pretty much an industry standard, although one company might have a really good idea, and their build might have propriatery aspects, but overall resemble industry practices. I'd guess in the latter aspect if utilizing a host railroad some familiarity with the gear woulf be a real help while operating.

Again, Thanks for your information!

We've been in the utility construction business since 1959. Built our first railplow in 1987. The locomotives were acquired in the mid to late 90's (I think they may have come from SP but don't recall for sure) and sold about 2005. For most of the installations we have completed, the RR furnishes the locomotive and it's crew. The railplows themselves are always operated by our personnel. It's very important to have an experienced crew with this type of installation.

Qwest's plows were originally built for SP Construction (a division of SP Telecom) which went on to purchase Qwest as referenced by others in previous posts. In 2004 Michels purchased 28 cars from Qwest, including four railplows, one of which has been retired due to it's age (UMLER). We currently have 5 railplows in our fleet. The link that Paul North provided showing the railplow in Horicon (MPCX-5003) was originally an SP or Qwest railplow (SPCX-5003). These are extremely heavy duty units. One of the units we have (MPCX-5002) is built on a locomotive chassis. Very durable in tough soil conditions.

Jerrold:

              Thanks, for the information! 

I have some photos of the Qwest plow when it was in Dalton, GA in the early 2000's. I'll go through the archive discs and try to post tomorrow.

Very nice unit!!

Robert

A few photos (1985 − 1992) of fibre ploughs owned by the Canadian National Railways. http://homepage.mac.com/cliqueofone/PhotoAlbum35.html http://homepage.mac.com/cliqueofone/PhotoAlbum36.html http://gallery.me.com/cliqueofone#100519&bgcolor=black&view=grid http://gallery.me.com/cliqueofone#100542&bgcolor=black&view=grid

CliqueofOne

A few photos (1985 − 1992) of fibre ploughs owned by the Canadian National Railways.

 http://homepage.mac.com/cliqueofone/PhotoAlbum35.html

http://homepage.mac.com/cliqueofone/PhotoAlbum36.html

http://gallery.me.com/cliqueofone#100519&bgcolor=black&view=grid

http://gallery.me.com/cliqueofone#100542&bgcolor=black&view=grid

Copied to activate links

Cliqueofone; Thanks for sharing the albums! Lots of interesting photos. 

I was wondering about the CN locomotive #96 in the photos 0287, and 0286. Seems a shame that it is allowed to sit in what looks like a state of neglect, although there seems to be a chainlink fence around it. Do you know what its story is?

Also, that looks like it was quite a trip by motocycle in 1992 up into Alaska.

 

 

If you are interested, I can tell you everything you would care to know about the RR Cable Plow.  I was involved with the machines for over ten years.

JLY

Gentlemen,

Some very interesting information in this thread. A few years back I had the privilege of photographing replacement of a small bridge. Included in the process was temporary placement of underground fiber optic cables to above ground poles. I assume that once the bridge was finished the FO cables were once again returned to their original position.

Sharing the ROW with public utilities is pretty common where I live. I assume it is mutually beneficial to both the railroad and the utility companies.

Thanks Jerrod, for sharing something I had no previous knowledge of.

The railroad cable plow was invented by Marty Helmus at Henkels & McCoy in the early 70s as a fast method of installing C&S cables along the Reading RR in Philadelphia.  I worked for Marty on the development of the second generation railroad cable plow.  It was patented.  We began the first ever railroad cable plow installation of a fiber optic network in March of 1984.  It began in Harrisburg, PA and traversed 749 miles to Chicago on the Conrail ROW.  The client was AT&T.

Michels (no "a") jumped our patent a year later and built their own railroad cable plow.  We (H&M) competed head to head with Michels in the coming years for contracts to install fiber optic networks on RR ROW for all of the they telecom companies

In 1985 I negotiated a contract with the telecom in Alaska and we took a railroad cable plow up there to install fiber optics.  We did a couple of projects over the next few year in Alaska.

I also negotiated contracts with Canadian National that ended in two plows being used for the trans-Candian fiber optic network.  I also took a plow to Mexico and installed fiber optics down there.

I was the construction director for Qwest east of the Mississippi.  We used many railroad cable plows on that project.  By then there were 8 firms with railroad cable plows.

JLYjr.

 

RRPlow

If you are interested, I can tell you everything you would care to know about the RR Cable Plow.  I was involved with the machines for over ten years.

JLY

 

Yeah, that would be cool. Do you have any 'work in progress' photos, showing the open trench, duct and junctionbox installation, and the special considerations made when boring under an intersecting line? How fast does the plow typically move along during routine installation?

 

Also, what do you do if you are tunneling along in soft dirt, then suddenly encounter a really large stone or unexpected underground obstruction.  Do you go around it, or do to muscle   your way through?

 

And, is there much 'hand work" involved, cleaning out the upstream sides of abutments for instance?

RRPlow

.  We began the first ever railroad cable plow installation of a fiber optic network in March of 1984.  It began in Harrisburg, PA and traversed 749 miles to Chicago on the Conrail ROW.  The client was AT&T.

 

Interesting, since it is exactly that line I've been thinking of as this thread has unfolded. Spotting it frequently  as it surfaces between bridge abutments.

Norm48327

Sharing the ROW with public utilities is pretty common where I live. I assume it is mutually beneficial to both the railroad and the utility companies.

Very much depends what the utility is, and where it is, and what year it is.  In the time when people were thinking there wasn't much future in the railroad business, the meager one-time check offered by a fiber company seemed like free money.  Fiber isn't too painful to move out of the way of a rail expansion project, but transmission lines become very expensive to move as their size grows larger, and pipelines apparently are made from solid gold. On a branch line it may not matter much, but right-of-way width in a high-traffic main line corridor is very valuable.  There are many who wish that our predecessors had never entertained anything in the ROW other than the railway.

RWM

   It must get interesting when you want to lay a new cable along a ROW that already has several cables buried.    I'm thinking you must have to keep records of distance from the rail of each cable, and that there must be a convention of minimum spacing between cables.    Are detectors (sonar or the like) used to locate the existing cables?

I'm still trying to find a cite-able source, but the Times-Herald Record reported about ten years ago about an abandoned railroad in either Sullivan, Orange, or Rockland county in New York that kept the embargoed rail bed intact so they could claim the railway as being "in service" and could collect fees on any and all easements that crossed the property.  They didn't have cables on the ROW, but they did charge those whose cables *crossed* the ROW.

I'm pretty sure it was Sullivan County but I've not been successful to identify the heritage railroad or the current owner as of yet.  It's a fascinating story, to me, at least.