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.
Dan
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
[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.
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!
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 Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
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.
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)."
Qwest began life as Southern Pacific Telecom. Just sayin'.
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....
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
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/
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.
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.
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 -
Same, in a full side view -
MPCX 5117 - cable/ conduit 'spool' car, with loaded spools, side view -
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
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.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
In another THREAD on this FORUM.
The topic was referencing RCLs in respect to burried communications lines.
Oltmand(Don), responded that PennCentral and Conrail had made heavy use of burried Communications Cables, rather than line-side pole lines for power and communications.
He stated he thought that NS was utilizing their portions of that network. Further mentioning that Conrail had operated a Company-owned cable plowthat was mounted on a flat car to burry their RCLs (Remote Cable Lines).
About 12 years ago, in the Atlanta, Ga. area I watched as a train with several flat cars with cable spools mounted to feed a fibre optic cable to a plow mounted on a flat car behind the the loaded cable cars, the plow(s) were mounted on a kind of pantagraph arrangement that allowed them to follow the terrain profile of the ROW being worked. The power appeared to be a couple of geeps (possibly Paducah rebuilds, one had an oxyolk breather assembly) and a caboose. The train was apparently owned by QWEST Corp. as that was the ident. markings. At the time I saw it it was working Atlanta to Macon line, and I saw saw it laying some on another line in the Atlanta west area.
This was a pretty unusual operation, and I've never seen any other types of operations reported on or photographed anywhere.
I am wondering how common is the practice of laying these cables on railroad ROWs?
I think when SPRINT was part of the Southern Pacific Corp. they may have done some of it, but don't know for sure.
Do the railroads that do bury their RCLs own their own equipment, or do they sub contract it out?
It seems that burying cable is a safer way to maintain communications, especially in areas prone to heavyt ice build up and tornadoes or hurricanes. I guess that burying is more expensive on the front end than pole lines, But I am not sure about that.
Any ideas/responses would be appreciated. Thanks, in advance!
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