(The Associated Press circulated the following story by Bob Moen on November 5.)
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Union Pacific has been shipping record amounts of coal out of Wyoming recently thanks in part to improvements the company has made in its operations, a company executive said.
In 2006, UP hauled a company record 194 million tons of coal from the southern Powder River Basin in northeast Wyoming. Last month, it loaded 1,116 trains with Powder River coal, the third consecutive month is has loaded more than 1,110 trains with coal, according to figures the company released Monday. By comparison, the company loaded more than 1,110 trains in two months last year _ January and December.
UP shipped a monthly record 17.2 million tons in August, and its 17.1 million tons hauled in September was the best ever for that month.
“Trains are getting longer, the cars that move the coal are moving more coal per car, and we’re working with utilities and the mines to move longer trains,” Doug Glass, UP vice president and general manager, said in a telephone interview from company offices in Omaha, Neb.
The company also improved its operations at its rail yard in North Platte, Neb., so that trains were not sitting idle as long.
“We’re able to turn those trains around a lot faster, and depart them from that major facility,” Glass said. “We now measure our departure time, or dwell time, in hours as opposed to days.”
One example of the more efficient operation is the process of repairing railcar wheels, he said. The wheels can be repaired while the car is still attached to the rest of the train, whereas before crews had to remove the individual car from the train in order to repair the wheel, he said.
“Just as an example, since 1999, our total coal tonnage has increased 43 percent, tons per train has increased 9 percent, and trains per day has increased 30 percent,” Glass said.
The number of cars in a single train have increased, too.
“A couple of years ago … the average size of a south Powder River Basin train was below 130; now we’re starting to get the size above 130 cars a train,” Glass said. “We’ve got some customers that we’ve been working with successfully and we’ve managed to increase train size deliveries to 142 cars. And we’re looking ahead at the future, we think the technology exists to deliver 150 car trains if the market warrants those size trains.”
UP has been moving an average of about 35 loaded coal trains a day out of the basin, he said.
In 2006, 20 percent of UP’s $15.6 billion in revenue was earned from shipping energy products, most of it coal.
Union Pacific operates 32,400 miles of track in 23 states from the Midwest to the West and Gulf coasts.