BNSF maintenance

[ericsp]

About three weeks to a month ago BNSF dropped off about 6 to 10 ties about every few years along its line. Today I saw what looked like the H VBCBAR on the UP tracks. I am guessing they must have been doing track work somewhere south of Stockton. I have not found anything in BNSF press releases about maintenance.

[ericsp]

I saw another H VBCBAR on UP on 12/10/04.

[Dough]

Both CSX and NS have done that around here in the past few years. They would come along with gondolas full of cross ties which they would drop down to the trackside via a backhoe or trac-hoe. They then would bring in a tie gang on a set of flat cars with a ramp at the end (CSX used a crane to pull them off and spin them because they were facing the wrong direction). These would work the tracks replacing around every other or every third tie depending on conditions.

As a part of the operation fairmont cranes would bundle nine ties together with metal bands, and then NS would later sell them to a landscaping company or something. CSX left them where they pulled them, and they used some high rail boom trucks to pull them off and stacked them in huge piles next to the road. Later a Case skid steer loader put them on racks and they bound them to sell. I actually have pictures of most of the operation.

[Anonymous]

in mendota, IL on the ex-CB&Q line there's a pile...a HUGE pile of ties right west of the viaduct. there has to be at least a couple thousand piled up. i thought maybe since the merger that this line would lose it's significance. maybe i'm wrong...

[ericsp]

I saw another H VBCBAR on the UP today. I also saw a westward (northbound) train sitting on a siding on BNSF tracks with a green signal for an eastward train. The maintenance must be on the old WP tracks or on the Inside Gateway.

[Anonymous]

I thought railways were no longer allowed to re-sell or give away used ties, because of environmental reasons, they had to be properly disposed of....

Perhaps this is just in Canada?

[mloik]

QUOTE: Originally posted by farmer03

in mendota, IL on the ex-CB&Q line there's a pile...a HUGE pile of ties right west of the viaduct. there has to be at least a couple thousand piled up. i thought maybe since the merger that this line would lose it's significance. maybe i'm wrong...

Interesting (but off topic)...there's a Mendota in California, too.

[Mookie]

QUOTE: Originally posted by ericsp

About three weeks to a month ago BNSF dropped off about 6 to 10 ties about every few years along its line. Today I saw what looked like the H VBCBAR on the UP tracks. I am guessing they must have been doing track work somewhere south of Stockton. I have not found anything in BNSF press releases about maintenance.

Having been through almost a year of maintenance here in Lincoln, I have seen all sorts of equipment and materials dropped off and then left sitting for long periods of time.

A MOW person - waiting for a train to cross, told us that they do some work and then leave our job site for another site and work there for awhile. Then in a month or so, they come back and do some work and leave again. We have some concrete ties and ballast that has been sitting since spring - has yet to be used, but bet they will eventually get to it. Seems kind of helter-skelter to me, but that is how they get things done - eventually.

Mook

[dekemd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by macguy

I thought railways were no longer allowed to re-sell or give away used ties, because of environmental reasons, they had to be properly disposed of....

Perhaps this is just in Canada?

Must be a Canada thing. When CSX did maintenance on the old Clinchfield line back in the summer, all the ties were taken to a site, sorted out by condition and sold off to the public. What didn't sell was loaded on gondolas and hauled off.