Track Structure

2012 chief enigneers’ survey: WISH LIST

Safety remains at the top of engineering department’s list of equipment guidelines.

You want to impress a railroad engineer with a piece of maintenance equipment? Make sure it’s versatile, reliable, as well as easy to maintain, to transport and to use. Above all else, it must be safe.

Maintaining ballast below the ties

Optimal track conditions rely heavily on ballast maintenance.

Ballast doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. For those outside of the industry, the flashy signals, rail and crossties are what railroad lines are made of.

L.B. Foster receives company’s largest order ever for rail products

L.B. Foster Company has been awarded the company’s largest rail products contract, valued at approximately $60 million, by contractor Kiewit/Kobayashi, a Joint Venture, for the county-wide construction of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) passenger transit system. L.B. Foster rail, concrete ties, direct fixation fasteners, third rail with accessories and special trackwork will be installed throughout the Honolulu Rail Transit Project’s new elevated railway system and maintenance yard.

Baker to study D.C.-area rail bridge

Michael Baker Jr., Inc., a unit of Michael Baker Corporation, has been awarded a $1.57 million contract by the District of Columbia Department of Transportation for a comprehensive study of Long Bridge over the Potomac River to assess existing conditions and options for rehabilitation or replacing the bridge crossing in the future. The heavily-used bridge carries traffic for three railroads, CSX (the bridge owner), Amtrak and the Virginia Railway Express and is the sole railroad bridge between the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Kansas DOT awards Unitrac a $3.4 million contract

Unitrac Railroad Materials, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Healey Railroad Corporation and a specialty trackwork manufacturer and distributor of new and relay rail, has received a $3.4 million award for a Kansas Department of Transportation project. The contract involves furnishing rail and other track components for the South Kansas and Oklahoma Railroad.

Metra awards Englewood Flyover contract

The Board of Directors of Chicago’s Metra approved a $93-million contract to construct the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency (CREATE) Program P1 project, know as the Englewood Flyover at its meeting on Monday.