With the current work on the Lancaster Train Station project nearing completion, Amtrak revealed a detailed plan for the next phase of station improvements, the Capstone project. Starting as soon as work on the current phase is complete, Amtrak will begin work to restore the passenger areas into an accessible, comfortable and convenient station that is of historic significance.
David L. Starling, president and chief executive officer of Kansas City Southern, has been named 2012 Railroader of the Year by Railway Age magazine. Railway Age and Railway Track & Structures are both owned by Simmons-Boardman Publishing Co.
Canadian Pacific entered into an agreement with Canadian Tire Corporation Limited, which extends to early 2017 and awards the railway with the vast majority of Canadian Tire’s domestic container traffic.
“Transit holds the key to a successful and prosperous region,” said Minnesota’s Metropolitan Council Chair Susan Haigh, while delivering her first State of the Region speech. Several hundred people attended the State of the Region event at Target Field in Minneapolis, where Haigh highlighted the role of transit in economic development and job creation.
In his 2012 State of the State speech, California Governor Edmund Brown Jr. spoke of plans for a high-speed rail system, which would connect the Northern and Southern parts of the state.
In his speech he stated:
“As governor the last time, I signed legislation to study the concept. Now 30 years later, we are within weeks of a revised business plan that will enable us to begin initial construction before the year is out.
“President Obama strongly supports the project and has provided the majority of funds for this first phase. It is now your decision to evaluate the plan and decide what action to take. Without any hesitation, I urge your approval.
“If you believe that California will continue to grow, as I do, and that millions more people will be living in our state, this is a wise investment. Building new runways and expanding our airports and highways is the only alternative. That is not cheaper and will face even more political opposition.
“Critics of the high-speed rail project abound as they often do when something of this magnitude is proposed. During the 1930s, The Central Valley Water Project was called a “fantastic dream” that “will not work.” The Master Plan for the Interstate Highway System in 1939 was derided as “new Deal jitterbug economics.” In 1966, then Mayor Johnson of Berkeley called BART a “billion dollar potential fiasco.” Similarly, the Panama Canal was for years thought to be impractical and Benjamin Disraeli himself said of the Suez Canal: “totally impossible to be carried out.” The critics were wrong then and they’re wrong now.”
The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approved authorization from the Ohio Rail Development Commission, directing CSX, Norfolk Southern and Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway to install flashing lights and gates at grade crossings in Delaware, Jefferson and Lorain counties, respectively.
Canadian Pacific says that part of the company’s multi-year plan is to invest between $1.1 billion (US$1.085 billion) and $1.2 billion (US$1.18 billion) for infrastructure renewal, network enhancements and expansion projects in 2012. The 2012 Capital Plan will focus on strategic and targeted investments to improve service and increase network capacity while funding business development and initiatives with rapid return on investment.
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton released his bonding proposal for the 2012 legislative session, building on his jobs plan to get Minnesotans back to work. The bonding proposal is focused on making the kind of long-term investments to create jobs. The bill would put up to 21,700 Minnesotans back to work and includes $25 million for the Southwest Corridor Light Rail.
A statement by the Governor’s office said, “Investing in strong, reliable infrastructure is a critical part of building an environment where businesses can thrive. Repairing our roads, bridges and rail lines for the future with smart investments can not only give Minnesota the assets to attract businesses, but can also put hundreds of Minnesotans back to work in the construction industries that are suffering from high unemployment.”
“This bill is our chance to put thousands of Minnesotans back to work by investing in important projects throughout our state. My bonding proposal makes reasonable, focused investments on projects that are ready for immediate action. I hope that the legislature will join me in growing Minnesota’s economy now by passing a bonding bill in the first month of the session. Doing so will enable many of the projects and their jobs, to become realities this year,” Governor Dayton said.
U.S. Department of Transportation awarded $77 million in grants to 22 University Transportation Centers to advance research and education programs that address critical transportation challenges facing the nation. The UTCs, which are located throughout the United States, conduct research that directly supports the priorities of the US DOT and the participating universities are a critical part of the national transportation strategy.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel officially re-opened the Grand Avenue Red Line Station, which has undergone a complete rehabilitation over the past several years. Additionally, Mayor Emanuel announced that the city will construct a new Green Line station at Cermak, build a new station at Washington and Wabash and conduct a complete rehabilitation at the station at Clark and Division.
Rockford, Ill., received a $3 million investment to develop a new multi-modal station just south of the downtown area. The Illinois Jobs Now! capital plan funding to design and engineer the new facility is in addition to the $60 million allocated to construct the Chicago-Rockford-Dubuque rail corridor. The two projects together are expected to support nearly 700 jobs and bring rail access back to a part of the state that has not seen service in 30 years.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality and the U.S. Department of Transportation revealed a pilot program to expedite environmental review of Northeast Corridor high-speed passenger rail projects. The statement below is from Amtrak President and CEO Joe Boardman:
Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, in joint partnership with the Buckhead Community Improvement District, Georgia Department of Transportation, State Road and Toll Authority, Federal Transit Administration and the city of Atlanta, is preparing to begin construction in the spring on a pedestrian bridge to reconnect the east and west sides of the Buckhead community.
Members of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Blacksmiths, Iron Ship Builders, Forgers and Helpers; the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers; and the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association have ratified new contracts with the nation’s largest freight railroads.
After re-evaluating route options for the Central Valley to Los Angeles Basin segment of California’s high-speed rail system, the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s Board decided to continue to move forward with a proposed route through Palmdale.
A continuation of upgrade and modernization work to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority Flushing Line and its stations will necessitate suspension of 7 train service between Queensboro Plaza and Times Square for eleven weekends beginning January 21, as well as the full closure of the Court Square Station on the 7 line until April 2, 2012.
The South Florida Regional Transportation Authority’s total ridership, including weekends and holidays, reached 3,948,100 in 2011, up from 3,644,978 in 2010, showing an increase of 8.3 percent.
Weeds, plants and other undergrowth are Mother Nature’s little annoyances to the railroads. Vegetation management crews are constantly out on-track, off-track and now even up in the air, fighting the battle for a clear right-of-way. There have been many improvements in herbicide mixes and machines to help keep ground bare, including a new system called Chlorovision.
One challenge in particular for vegetation management crews is fighting for track time to get the job done, that’s why All Railroad Services Corp. takes the work off-track.
Vinnie Vaccarello, co-president of ARS Corp., notes that the company is consistently asked to find ways to do vegetation control off-track, since track time is always a premium. To aid in the time constraint battle, ARS Corp. looks to incorporate vegetation control in other services it provides to maximize track time.
Vaccarello says railroads defer vegetation management and it gets out of control; however, railroads are starting to learn that an aggressive maintenance program saves money in the long run.
Asplundh Railroad Division now offers its Aerial Tree Trimmer, an airborne trimmer, which does not require track time to perform trimming operations. It’s capable of working in rugged or swampy areas where ground crews have limited access to the right-of-way. Heavy overhanging brush is easily removed by the 10-blade saw cluster, leaving a ground to sky view. The Aerial Trimmer is also capable of providing chemical side trimming.
The company is currently working with Perceptive Robotics to develop a system called Chlorovision, which is currently in use. Using new vegetation identification technology, the Chlorovision system identifies vegetation in the treatment zone with pinpoint accuracy and automatically controls the application equipment to precisely treat only the targeted vegetation at speeds up to 50 mph. To learn more about Cholorovision, please see page 26.
Drift control is and always will be a major concern for railroad vegetation control applicator companies, notes Shane Boatright, president of Boatright Companies.
“It can have a tremendous impact on your insurance premiums in the event you have a claim due to allowing your chemical product to drift off the target area on to a landowner’s property along the railroad,” he explained. “We use a variety of drift control agents to avoid these problems and the weather each day dictates what and how much we need in a tank mix. Wind is not your friend in this business.”
Boatright says he is happy to see that with budget cut backs during this tough economy, the shortline railroad customers continue to spray their railroads each year.
“We encourage that simply because skipping a year of vegetation control spraying on your railroad can be very expensive in the long run,” he said. “Spraying something is far better than nothing in a railroad’s continuing efforts to control the brush and vegetation growing along their railroad each year.”
Brandt Rail Services is a U.S.-based service contract arm of Brandt Road Rail Inc. BRS provides the Brandt family of railroad maintenance-of-way products packaged in a service plan for its customers. BRS provides a self-powered excavator package, Brandt Rail Tool, that comes with a 52-inch brush cutting head. This head is powered by a dedicated power source so the operation is able to handle heavy brush cutting with no loss in motive or braking power.
“Our service plans include providing a grapple, a bucket and the heavy-duty brush cutting head,” said Steve Orrell, vice president rail services at BRS. “If heavy brush, refuse or timber products need removing from the same remote sight, the Brandt Rail Tool can pull up to two air dumps or gondolas for hauling away all types of material. No other brush-cutting platform can pull its own cars if heavy clearing is needed.”
“The single largest challenge in our industry today is the continued development of herbicide-resistant weed species,” said Wayne Hug, vice president railroad division at DeAngelo Brothers Inc.
“One key contributing factor to this problem is the fact that our industry has gone several years without much new product development, so our control options have been limited,” he explained. “Roughly 10 years ago, a lot of brand name product patents began to expire; that created huge expansion opportunities for the generic market. As costs for generic products came down, control of certain species became more difficult because the chemistry at hand had already been heavily used for several years. The end result is many of the products that effectively controlled challenging species just a few years ago now have almost no effect on our most difficult challenges such as kochia, sprangle top and even crab grass. While the old chemistry still effectively controls 80 percent to 90 percent of the weed and grass species we encounter and it is still needed, it effectively eliminates competition for other, more difficult to control species and those species populations are increasing at rapid rates.”
The company’s challenge with chemical-resistant weed species is comparable to the challenges humans are encountering today with “Super Bugs” (infections) and the lack of new, effective antibiotics to control them, notes Hug.
Dow AgroScience’s aminopyralid-based products are relatively new to the market. These include Milestone®, Capstone® and Opensight® specialty herbicides. The active ingredient, aminopyralid, provides systemic control of target species, such as marestail and many other tough-to-control broadleaf weeds. It also is said to have a favorable environmental profile and Milestone was registered under the Reduced Risk Pesticide Initiative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Resistance is no stranger to vegetation management crews.
“In 1990, you may have been able to treat an acre with five pounds of herbicide and get 80 percent control,” explained Homer Deckard, railroad IVM specialist for Dow AgroSciences. “Then, in 2000, maybe it moved to seven pounds of herbicide to get 70 percent control. Now, you could be looking at 10 pounds of herbicide to get 50 percent control.
Deckard says the resistance has become so specialized that you can’t just add more herbicide to achieve that same control. One has to consider adding additional herbicides with different modes-of-action to traditional mixes to address one or two resistant weeds.
“We are really at a tipping point,” he said. “If we don’t work as an industry to address resistance, our railway track and structures will be overtaken by resistant ‘super weeds’ like marestail, kochia, pigweed and others.”
Harvey Holt, professor emeritus, Department of Forestry & Natural Resources at Purdue University notes that kochia, an annual broadleaf weed, occurs in almost every state and province in the U.S. and Canada.
“It also has the distinction of having plants resistant to multiple herbicide modes-of-action,” he explained.
A test of herbicide treatments containing newly-registered products, as well as industry standards was established April 4, 2011, near Yakima, Wash., to a site had not been treated in 2010. The following combinations of registered herbicides resulted in more than 90 percent bare ground, 159 days after treatment:
• Esplanade 5 oz + Perspective 4.75 oz + Razor 2 qt +R-11 ¼ percent
• Esplanade 5 oz + Perspective 7.5 oz + Razor 2 qt + R-11 ¼ percent
• Method 6 oz + Matrix 3 oz + Razor 1 qt + R-11 ¼ percent
• Method 4 oz + Hyvar 2 lb + Razor 1 qt + R-11 ¼ percent
Each year presents its own unique challenges as more weeds develop resistance to popular chemical active ingredients and customers demand better control, explains Craig Mercier, president and CEO of MERCIER’S, Inc.
“By partnering with Alligare, LLC, the nation’s largest vegetation control chemical supplier, MERCIER’S, Inc., has isolated the best chemical active ingredients, creating sound herbicide mixes that provide unmatched weed control,” Mercier said. “The key to having chemical choices in the years to come is to not cut corners by applying at a reduced rate.”
Though many companies have experienced challenging times, Mercier says MERCIER’S, Inc. has had much success.
“Our greatest asset we bring to any customer for any job can be summed up in one word: integrity. If we always strive for the highest mark, then our business will continue to grow expedientially,” he explained.
Nufarm Americas Inc. launched a new product, Aquasweep, that contains the active ingredients 24-D triclopyr. It is the first combination product to be launched that contains aquatic use sites. The product is said to perform well on broadleaf weeds, brush and vines.
The EPA is no longer accepting label verbiage as “non crop” use sites, notes George Telesz, regional sales manager at Nufarm.
“Each application site must be specifically defined. Railroad applicators need to be aware of these changes to be in compliance with labeled use sites. As labels are updated by manufacturers the updates are being added. Some agricultural products may not be acceptable in the railroad market in the future.”
In the Midwest, high plains and west resistance management continues to challenge applicators, Telesz explained.
“Rotational herbicides needs to be considered to break the chain of over using the same product year after year,” he said.
Kershaw, a Division of Progress Rail Services Inc., has recently introduced the new generation Two Sky Trim. The Sky Trim is a high-production mechanical tree trimmer that is capable of trimming tree limbs up to a height of 75 feet, a faster rate than was previously possible, says Kershaw. The Sky Trim can be fitted with rail gear when used on rail right-of-way. This all-terrain machine is powered by a 127 hp Caterpillar engine and utilizes heavy-duty Caterpillar axles. The operator’s cab is said to offer exceptional visibility and comfort and is industry-certified for roll over and falling objects protection.
The company also developed a new high-production brush cutter, the Klearway Model 500. This machine is capable of cutting and mulching heavy brush and trees up to 12 inches in diameter.
“The machine is growing in popularity because of its maneuverability and high production on all types of terrain,” noted Mike Balkom, national sales manager utility equipment at Kershaw.
The unit is powered by a hp Caterpillar 200 engine and has power to spare when clearing heavy brush. The Klearway’s mulching attachment allows for safe operation when cutting near crossings as the front-mounted drum mulcher minimizes the possibility of projectiles being thrown while cutting. The cab offers operator comfort with great visibility and is industry certified for roll over protection.
“For 2012, we will be introducing an all-terrain carrier for bucket lifts and herbicide spraying equipment,” said Balkom.
The requests Rail Construction Equipment Co. receives are for versatility in products to handle vegetation requirements. RCE has developed a new on-track brush cutter that it says provides improved cutting ability and meets all tier 4 emission requirements.
RCE has been developing new attachments to handle brush cutting to add to its on-track and conventional off-track machines. For example, more cutter heads for RCE’s high-rail excavators and tie cranes.
“The economy has had some affect on this market, however, we are seeing an increase in the demand for the renting of this equipment,” noted Dennis Hanke, railroad specialist for RCE.
The Tiger WetCutTM from Robolube Industries, Inc., helps control unwanted vegetation with a systemic control system. The herbicide is applied directly after the cut, ensuring positive and complete application of the herbicide to the vegetation. It allows for spot spraying or continuous operation and can be used with rotary or flail cutters.
“A wide variety of herbicides can be applied,” noted Bob Pieper, president of Robolube Industries, Inc. “Most of our customers have been asking for a larger truck with the ability to cut at 28 ft. to 30 ft. from centerline of track. We all want to do more with the equipment that we have to justify the expense and cost of operation.”
The Tiger RailKutTM provides on-and off-track vegetation control. Tiger transforms a Ford F-550 truck into a 21-foot reach boom-type mower that will handle trees up to six inches in diameter with its rotary head. Tiger also offers a quick, interchangeable cold air blower that allows the RailKut to increase its utilization in the winter months for blowing snow and debris from switches and other areas that can be problematic.
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority General Manager and CEO Richard Sarles recommended operating and capital budgets for the next fiscal year that continue the authority’s path of improvement on safety and reliability, as well as provide more and enhanced service for rail and bus riders.
California’s Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority was notified by the Federal Transit Administration that VTA’s $900 million grant request for the Bay Area Rapid Transit Silicon Valley Berryessa Extension Project has received all of the administrative approvals. VTA is now 60 days away from being awarded the anticipated funds through a full funding grant agreement.
