(The following story by Greg Gormick appeared on the Toronto Star website on May 31.)
TORONTO — When the terrorist attack on Manhattan’s World Trade Center brought the twin towers down, the human and physical destruction was massive and well-reported. But largely unremarked was the damage it inflicted on the New York region’s transportation system and how a GTA rail and transit firm got things moving again.
Buried by the collapsed towers was the terminal of a vital subway line that links Manhattan with New Jersey, owned and operated by the same Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) that owned the World Trade Center. Until Sept. 11, 2001, that station enabled 67,000 transit riders to commute daily under the Hudson River to lower Manhattan. One train was crushed, the station was demolished and the tunnel was flooded all the way to New Jersey.
Getting the line back in service was urgent. Another trans-Hudson subway to midtown Manhattan and the ferries that cross the river were overloaded by the crowds scrambling for alternate routes. An ambitious rebuilding schedule was set and the big hitters in transit construction were called in. Most demurred; they didn’t think they could meet the deadline, which allowed 16 months for return to operation. But under this pressure, AM/AR Rail Systems, based in Bronte and Milton, was willing to stake its reputation on the job.
“We re-equipped the system with our own technology and completed it one month early,” says Bill Mountain, president of the Advanced Railway (AR) Concepts division of the two-pronged firm. “It was a joint effort involving a number of different companies that were all under the gun. We, in fact, were doing our work as a sub-contract to Union Switch & Signal, out of Pittsburgh.”
AM/AR designs advanced, multi-processor-based rail and transit traffic control systems and builds, installs and maintains the signals and communications involved. This includes the wayside signals that guide the train crews, grade crossing lights and gates and the safety equipment that scans the trains as they flash by.
“We’re a niche company in a business that’s a niche itself,” says Mountain. “It’s a very small and tight world dominated by a handful of very big companies. One day we’re competing with each other, the next we’re sub-contracting with or buying products from each other.”
AM/AR’s customer list includes the major freight railways, VIA Rail and Amtrak, short lines and transit and commuter rail systems in Toronto, Ottawa, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
As you approach the AR Concepts site in Milton’s north-end industrial zone, you’re confronted by a giant silver shed. Known as a signal bungalow, It is being wired and relay-equipped by AR employees for use at a major junction — known in the biz as an interlocking plant — on Cleveland’s subway and light rail system.
Inside the company’s own building, a complete diagram of the track and signals for Philadelphia’s Broad Street subway wraps around two walls in the design office. AR is creating the new train traffic control system that will be at the heart of the $78 million (U.S.) modernization of this heavily-used line.
A few kilometers down the road, at the AM Signal manufacturing facility in Bronte, workers are completing grade crossing hardware — flashing lights, bells, gates and the masts and cantilever structures on which they will be mounted — for locations on GO’s Stouffville commuter rail line. Smaller silver signal bungalows are inside the shop, too, being fitted with high-tech gear that will control this equipment out in the field.
Mike Sullivan is president of AM Signal and half-owner of AR; the two firms are marketed together under the AM/AR Rail Systems banner.
Sullivan started the firm 20 years ago when employed by the Canadian National Railway as signal supervisor on the busy Oakville subdivision, linking Toronto Union Station with Hamilton. He started in 1966 on a signal gang upgrading this line for GO Transit’s first commuter train service. Son of a CN station agent, Sullivan grew up around railroading. His family lived in stations or company houses during his father’s career in Ontario and New England.
Says Sullivan, “One of the first jobs I ever had as a kid was . . . loading buckets of iced chickens from the Canada Packers plant in Walkerton on to the CN express cars to go to Toronto. I worked on a signal gang while I was in a co-op university engineering program in Waterloo. But the money was so good I figured I might just as well go into CN full time without my degree.”
He met Mountain at CN while rebuilding grade crossing equipment in southwestern Ontario. Mountain is from a railway family too. His grandfather was a CN locomotive engineer in Quebec, and his dad worked for the railway for 46 years. Mountain joined in 1964, digging cable trenches for CN’s electronically advanced marshalling yard at Keele Street and Highway 7. He left CN in 1979 to work in the Toronto design office of U.S.-based Union Switch & Signal, one of the largest firms in the trade.
The nucleus of AM/AR was born in 1984. Rail-served industrial plants build and maintain the spur lines and sidings that connect with the tracks of the main-line railways. Traditionally, these companies hired CN or Canadian Pacific Railway to do the work. When the Ford Motor Co. needed to install equipment on three grade crossings within its Oakville complex, Sullivan and some co-workers bid on the job and did it on a weekend off. “We did it faster than the railways would have. When I saw how much we could make from just a weekend of hard work and I realized how many of these industrial jobs might be out there, I kind of knew my days with CN were numbered.”
Sullivan continued to work for the railway while his sideline business was in its infancy. Finally, in 1989, he “pulled the pin” and uncoupled from CN, to use railway lingo. His firm had expanded beyond grade crossing equipment, adding heaters and blowers used to keep switches ice-free and specialized detection equipment that inspects trains as they roll by.
At the same time, Mountain was contemplating the start-up of his own signal design firm in partnership with electrical engineer John Conti, with whom he had worked at CN and later at Union Switch & Signal. There, Mountain and Conti had been involved in upgrading Pittsburgh’s streetcar network and the start-up of Dublin, Ireland’s commuter train system. When the big U.S. firm was bought out by Italian industrial giant Ansaldo, the Toronto design office was closed.
“We could see opportunities because of the increasing outsourcing by the railways and transit systems,” says Mountain. “There was also going to be a lot of very specialized work in upgrading pieces of existing systems, which the heavy hitters in the business really would prefer not to do. They’re geared to all-new systems from scratch. But we could see a market . . . taking on these piecemeal projects and building our name with our own technology and our hands-on knowledge.”
The same thing had happened for Sullivan in supplying railway safety and operations hardware. This was the dawn of the short line era in Canada, when CN and CPR were selling off light density lines to new companies which didn’t have signals and communications departments.
“Our first big contract was actually with an old short line railway,” says Sullivan. “It’s the Essex Terminal Railway, which serves the industrial plants in Windsor. We put in their new crossing protection equipment at Huron Church Rd., reputed to be the busiest grade crossing in Canada because it’s the main route to the Ambassador Bridge. We also took on the maintenance of their crossings.”
By putting AM Signal together with AR Concepts, a one-stop-shopping approach to railway and transit supply was taken further.
Says Sullivan, “I bought 50 per cent of Bill and John’s firm because it’s a perfect fit with mine. Between the two, we can take on just about anything and we have product lines that support each other.”
An example is the design, construction and installation of the signalling, grade crossing protection and all other gear for VIA’s portion of the former CN main line between Ottawa and Montreal. VIA bought the line after the ice storm of 1998 brought down the wiring that operated the signals. AM/AR won the bid to build an all-new system that would handle more and faster passenger trains.
“That was a big win for us,” says Mountain. “When we started AR, we found very quickly that you’re never a hero in your own hometown. We went for a couple of years with no Canadian contracts. Our first job was designing the signalling for the Cincinnati Terminal. Then, we did projects for Amtrak and various U.S. transit systems. Our Canadian breakthrough was designing and installing the signals for CPR’s rebuilding of its Thunder Bay-Portage-la Prairie main line. That was the first big job major Canadian railways let to outsiders.”
On the PATH World Trade Center project, the company had to design and build a micro-processor-based control system that would be compatible with the older system that remained on the rest of this subway system linking Manhattan, Hoboken, Jersey City and Newark.
The three owners of the interconnected firms see this broad spectrum of software, hardware, design and maintenance services as being keys to profiting in this niche. Sullivan calls it “the multiple pillars of success. The more pillars you build, the better. If it goes quiet on the design side of the business, we have the meat and potatoes stuff to keep us active.”
One of the more mundane sides of the AM/AR product line is their track-switch heaters and blowers. To keep switches clear of snow and ice, the devices blow hot or cold air into the moveable track components.
AM’s general manager of operations, Dan Fargiorgio, shows a dual-mode heater/blower at the Bronte plant. With a flip of the switch, the ungainly-looking machinery blows a 225-km/hour gust of cold air. Another flip of the switch ignites the gas-powered burner, blowing hot air to melt any snow or ice around the vital points on the rail.
“That’s a growth market,” says Sullivan. “The railways and transit systems are definitely looking to increase and improve the use of this technology, especially after the way this past winter disrupted their service and operations.”
By building a revenue stream from these products, AM/AR has been able to invest in research and development, says Sullivan. AM/AR invested $5 million in its Train Movement Manager, a point-and-click PC system that has formed the cornerstone of high-profile projects such as the PATH World Trade Center and VIA Ottawa-Montreal contracts.
“It’s proved a good investment,” says Sullivan“If we hadn’t developed it, we wouldn’t be able to bid for work on GO’s resignalling of Toronto Union Station, which is the granddaddy of all train traffic control projects right now.”
Getting a clear signal to grow is on Sullivan’s timetable for AM/AR. To help make it happen, the company recently hired its first marketing and sales director, Charley Best. The grandson of Dr. Charles Best, co-discoverer of insulin, he agrees when both Sullivan and Mountain say there’s a boom in railway and transit construction coming.
“Both the railways and public transit are finally being recognized as under appreciated and underfunded forms of transportation that hold the solutions to problems like highway gridlock, pollution and sustainable economic growth,” says Best. “We have to finally put money into these forms of transportation, just as they have in so many other countries that compete with Canada. We intend being right on the crest of that wave.”
With a background in manufacturing systems software, Best says he was attracted to AM/AR because of its innovation.
“The discovery of insulin by Dr. Frederick Banting’s team is a good example of how Canadians can innovate and make global contributions,” says Best. “It’s an entirely different field, but the work being done at AM/AR is similar. The rail and transit operators on this continent and elsewhere are looking for innovation in trying to deal with our transportation problems and get more capacity out of our existing rail systems.” Sullivan laughs when he says, “This is going to sound like one of those Dofasco ads, but the strength of this company is its people. Not just old hands like Bill, John and me. But we’ve been able to attract some really bright young guys who have brought new ideas to what is a very old and solid industry.”
Jason Fries, engineering manager of AM/AR’s rail control and communications business, is a 1997 graduate of Mohawk College of Applied Arts and Technology. He never imagined working in something he thought of as old fashioned and low-tech.
Fries, who was the point man on the PATH project, says part of the attraction is “being able to work with some fascinating older technology, introducing new ideas and concepts and putting them together to produce something that builds on the strengths of the past and then vaults forward. But there is also a thrill in watching the first PATH train roll into (lower Manhattan), hearing the crowd applaud and realizing you helped make it happen.”
Sullivan, who calls himself “just an old railroader at heart,” likes to hear those sentiments from his younger employees. From his second floor office in Bronte, he watches a GO train flash by on the multiple-track main line he helped upgrade for commuter service and later ruled as a CN signal supervisor.
He smiles when he ventures the opinion that the time of the train, the streetcar and the subway is here again.
“We want our company to be a big part of it,” says Sullivan. “But it’s also a matter of believing in these industries and their potential. When I watch a 100-car freight train pounding by or a GO train winding through the switches into Union Station, I know this is a lot more fun than, say, plumbing or the floor covering business. “