(The following article by Dan Chanzit was posted on the Kane County Chronicle website on February 10.)
ELBURN, Ill. — The third set of tracks that will extend commuter service from Geneva to Elburn is in place.
Now it all just needs to be welded together.
On Sunday and Monday, workers dropped off 20 sets of 1,600-foot-long sections of track. Each set is a little longer than five football fields.
At those lengths, that is enough steel to extend the rail from Peck Road to the Metra coachyard and commuter station that is under construction in Elburn, about six miles west of Peck Road.
“There’s a lot of work going on,” said Bob Straiton, manager of special projects for Union Pacific.
Two sets of tracks already run between Geneva and Elburn. Rails for the third track were laid alongside the south track, several feet to the south.
“We’ll use a crane to move them later,” UP employee Tom Fitzgerald said.
Getting the 36-ton steel “sticks” to their destination took lots of planning and coordination, Straiton said.
The rail segments were made last year at a factory in Wyoming.
Eighty-foot sections were welded together at the plant to form the 1,600-foot sticks.
Each set of sticks was transported atop 26-car trains pulled by two engines.
After the sticks arrived in central Kane County, workers attached a chain to one end of each stick, lashing them to the south track.
To remove each set of sticks from the train cars, the train slowly headed west, which allowed workers to feed each stick off the cars simultaneously through a steel guide.
The process resembles extruding a crescent moon shape onto the ground from a mobile Play-Doh Fun Factory. The track is somewhat flexible because of its length.
“It’s just like a piece of spaghetti,” Straiton said. “It’s not hard steel. It is flexible. It’s not stiff like you think it would be.”
Work to prepare the track for assembly is ongoing, which includes grading the land to make it flat for the bed of ballast. Construction began in July 2003.
Assembly is slated to begin March 1, depending on the weather, UP officials said. Workers will lift the tracks with cranes to set them on about 15,000 concrete railroad ties.
“Concrete is more sturdy,” UP spokesman Gene Hinkle said. “We’re replacing the wooden ones with concrete. They just last longer.”
The Elburn Metra station will replace Geneva as the last stop on the Union Pacific West Line. It will be on 50 acres north of Blackberry Creek and Keslinger Road.
The Elburn property will include a 300-space parking lot, a coachyard and a warming house.
Another station will be built in La Fox, an unincoprorated settlement east of Elburn. It will have a 300-space parking lot and a warming house.
The project is expected to cost $135 million. About $81 million will come from federal funds, and the rest will come from state and local funds.