(The following story by Alexandra Sukhomlinova appeared on the Gillette News Record website on May 8, 2009.)
GILLETTE, Wyo. — Union Pacific coal shipments out of the Powder River Basin won’t be affected by railroad track improvements on the line between Wyoming and Nebraska, company officials said Thursday.
The Nebraska-based railroad announced Wednesday that it would spend about $27 million on track improvements on the line between Lusk and Henry, Neb. The track is owned and used by Union Pacific and is one of the busiest parts of Union Pacific’s line that runs from Shawnee Junction south of Bill to Morrill, Neb. About 74 trains use the track daily, most of which are coal trains.
When the project is completed in the end of June, crews will have removed and installed more than 76,000 concrete ties and 29 miles of rail and spread 98,000 tons of rock ballast, according to the Union Pacific press release. The work on the track is part of regular maintenance to ensure a stable roadbed and replace four switches, the machines that guide a train from one track to another.
“It’s a normal maintenance cycle for that particular road,” said Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis.
Improvement work on the track will cause no shipment disruptions because the trains coming from the Powder River Basin will be able to use adjacent tracks. The company visually inspects its tracks at least three times a week, but most of the time ties or rails are inspected daily, Davis said.
In addition to visual inspections, Union Pacific’s maintenance staff does at least two electronic inspections each year. They include an ultrasound inspection that looks for any defects inside the rail and another electronic inspection that measures how the track is sitting on the ground.
The company’s lines in the Powder River Basin subdivision that start south of Bill are on the maintenance list this year, Davis said. The company plans to invest $1.7 million this year in maintenance work on the railroad’s 32,000-mile system across the nation.