Union Pacific Employee-Designed E-Clip Cart Makes Removal Easy and Efficient

Union Pacific

SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Through input and improvements, a UP employee-designed cart removes e-clips automatically.

A Union Pacific employee designed an e-clip cart to work automatically. In the embedded video below, the e-clips, which secure the rail by fastening it to the tie plates, are removed quickly and easily. The cart is used currently “on tracks around San Antonio, Texas,” and “a few additional carts will soon be underway for other Rail South gangs.”

Instead of completing the labor by hand, workers can focus on other tasks. Manager – Track Programs, Engineering, Justin Philips said that the design “frees up our team to continue the rail-lying process.” Director – Track Programs, Engineering, Bill Titsworth, commented that “without this, re-laying a 2,000-foot-long curve requires a group of eight employees to hit each clip one by one with a maul until all clips have been removed – two clips per tie plate.” The design has been received well among the rail gang.