Amtrak replacing faulty ties

Amtrak is working on its railroad, spending tens of millions of dollars replacing thousands of the concrete ties that hold up its tracks because the ties are failing, the Providence, R.I., Journal reports.

"We’ve been replacing
hundreds of thousands of ties in the Northeast Corridor," said Amtrak spokesman
Clifford Cole. He said work is going on throughout the corridor, from
Washington, D.C. through Rhode Island to Boston. The defective ties need to be
replaced because they are cracking, Cole said.

The ties were manufactured
by Rocla Concrete Tie Inc., which is based in Denver and has facilities around
the world. It says it has made more than 20 million concrete railroad ties.
Company officials could not be reached.

"They were supposed to last
50 years and they only lasted 10," Cole said of the concrete ties. He said the
manufacturer is replacing the defective ties.

Meanwhile, he said, "We
still have crews going up and down" the tracks looking for more ties that need
to be replaced.

In a statement on the work,
the company that operates commuter service here called it "emergency track
work." The Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Co. also said that the work is "necessary
for safe, reliable service."

Amtrak’s Cole denied it. "It
is not emergency work," he said. "There’s no danger at all. There’s no risk
involved."

In Rhode Island, Cole said,
the railroad is currently working between the Massachusetts state line and
Davisville, the former naval base. Amtrak says the Rhode Island work going on
now will end about Sept. 24.

Hundreds of new ties are
stacked on flat cars on Amtrak’s sidings. To replace the ties, Amtrak is using
massive machinery that lifts up the rails, extracts the old ties, digs out and
replaces the ballast (the stones under the ties), inserts new ties and clips
the rails back to them. It is doing one section of track at a time, with that
section temporarily taken out of service.

So far, Cole said, Amtrak
has replaced 393,000 ties in the Northeast Corridor. He said the biggest
concentrations are in New Jersey and New England. The number of ties being
replaced in Rhode Island wasn’t available, but Amtrak says it expects to
replace about 850,000 ties overall by the end of 2014.

A spokesman for the
Massachusetts Bay Commuter Rail Company, which operates the commuter service
for the MBTA, said the work would cause some delays as service is shifted from
one track to another. Cole agreed that "the possibility for delays is there."

Two rail passenger services
operate on Amtrak’s tracks here, Amtrak itself and the commuter rail service
from Providence to Boston.