ARH Gives Maintenance Updates on Six Railroads

Anacostia Rail Holdings

CHICAGO – For 2024, Anacostia Rail Holdings gave a progress update for six railroads including Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad, Louisville & Indiana Railroad, and Northern Lines Railway.

Anacostia Rail Holdings APEX 2024 contained a summary update of its maintenance operations across several short line and regional railroads. Monte Stokes, Chief Engineer, will “widen his responsibilities” in 2024 for the six railroads detailed below and stated that he is “fortunate to start this responsibility with railroads that are already in great shape. . . [He] will look for opportunities to share best-practices developed at each railroad, as well as identify synergies between them that will improve efficiency.”

For Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad, “freight shipments have moved while the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD) implemented a major double tracking project between Michigan City and Gary, Indiana.” Both CSS and NICTD worked to coordinate several outages in order to allow for the construction of culverts, realignment, and cutover of track segments. The report says it will continue this through mid-2024 until such time when the program is completed.

In 2023, Gulf Coast Switching installed 19,000 cross ties, 1,500 switch ties, 25 switch stands, 3,100 feet of rail, and surfaced 37 storage tracks at two major UP Storage-In-Transit (SIT) yards in both Dayton and Angleton, Texas.

Louisville & Indiana Railroad continued work on the steel bridge across the Ohio River. In 2023, crews have worked on more than 2,000 cross tie replacements on spans 12 and 16 and will continue to do so on spans 17 and 14 in 2024. As the project continues into 2026, crews will also complete maintenance projects that include “improvements to industrial leads at Columbus and Jeffersonville funded by Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvement (CRISI) grant in 2024 along with installation of solar panels at these facilities, and conversion of an old engine house to an MoW facility.” Later this year, it will also begin a signaling project.

After the success of a New York State 80% grant application, those funds will go toward constructing a new track at the main CSX interchange for New York & Atlantic Railway. This will add the capacity for a 10,000-foot train. In addition, work continues on an in-house rebuild of GP unit cabs which include “air conditioning, upgraded heating, and new seating and flooring.” 

For Northern Lines Railway, work will begin after the success of a Minnesota Rail Service Improvement (MSRI) grant application. Combined with funds from the City of Waite Park, the railway has “undertaken an important highway crossing renovation as well as preventative maintenance of main yard track 11 with tamping, fixing joints, and adding ballast.”

On the Pacific Harbor Line, maintenance projects also continue into 2024. The key Badger Bridge will see new ties, and crews will install new switches on the Wilmington wye track and upgrades on the east leg of the wye. Crews will also replace cross ties at the Farragut crossing in order to increase the speed from 10 to 20mph. In addition, there will also be improvements to the Tosco crossing.