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Tonymercury · Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 5:22 am

Clearing Oregon railroad slide could take weeks, cost millions
2/16/2008, 2:22 p.m. PT
The Associated Press

OAKRIDGE, Ore. (AP) — Clearing last month's massive landslide that wiped out Union Pacific railroad tracks near Oakridge will take at least six more weeks and cost millions of dollars, a railroad official said.

Conditions on Coyote Mountain, where the slide took place, are still too unstable to further determine time and cost, said Union Pacific Vice President Bill Van Trump.

The slide cut the railroad's main north-south line in Western Oregon. The 15 daily freight trains using the tracks have been rerouted, some through Bend and some as far east as Salt Lake City, creating delays of from 24 to 48 hours, said Union Pacific spokeswoman Zoe Richmond.

Amtrak's Coast Starlight service between Seattle and Los Angeles remains cancelled, although regional trains still carry travellers over parts of the line in California, Oregon and Washington.

Construction crews totalling about 150 people are stabilizing the base of the slope with gravel and rock crushed from the landslide debris. Small landslides are still occurring. One on Friday stopped work for a time.

Three spotters on the upper portion of the slide warn workers below when the ground shows signs of moving.

The Jan. 19 slide was the railroad's worst natural disaster in Oregon in 40 years, Van Trump said. He said it has been complicated by heavy snowfall and downed trees.

The slide, covering 60 acres, obliterated 1,500 feet of track in one spot and 150 feet in another. The smaller portion has been replaced.

Geologists say they believe the slide started where part of the slope that had been clear-cut in 1992 slumped down.

About 700,000 board feet of timber has been recovered. When all the trees have been recovered the U.S. Forest Service plans to sell them at auction.

Union Pacific is working with the U.S. Forest Service to comply with federal environmental regulations as they stabilize the hillside and prepare to reopen the line, Van Trump said.

At this point, its difficult to gauge the economic impact of the landslide.

Oakridge is enjoying an economic boom with full motel rooms and busy restaurants serving the work crews.

Amtrak is losing about 1,400 riders a day, spokeswoman Vernae Graham said. She said winter is a slow season. "We start to see an increase in ridership closer to spring," she said.

She said rider revenue would have to be balanced against the lack of expense in running the trains in order to estimate the impact, and that has not been calculated.

Some railroad buffs have asked in an online forum if a track through slide-prone mountains is a good idea, but Van Trump said it is a reasonable location.

"An interruption every 40 to 50 years in the grand scheme of things is not that big a deal," he said.

Landslides are a natural part of the Cascades, said Fred Swanson, a research geologist with the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station. "This is just one little tick in a multimillion-year history of that river valley."

Tony Bailey
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Tonymercury · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 5:36 am

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-train3mar03,1,7944005.story

Oregon landslide is bad for a railroad, good for a town

The disaster severed a key Union Pacific track connecting L.A. and
Seattle, but it has brought a welcome financial boost to nearby
Oakridge.

By Stuart Glascock, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 3, 2008

SEATTLE - The owner of a fluff-and-fold laundry in a small western
Oregon town couldn't be happier that tons of mud, rocks, snow and fir
trees sloughed off a hillside one day in January.

No one was hurt when the landslide took out the Union Pacific
Railroad's main track through the Cascades south of Eugene, but it
has severed a key rail link between Los Angeles and Seattle. The
slide spans 3,000 feet.

The railroad has dispatched about 200 workers to clear toppled
old-growth trees, shore up the hill, and rebuild the tracks. Luckily
for the local business, the crews take their mud- and silt-caked
jeans and overalls to the 4-month-old laundry in nearby Oakridge.

"It's been great for us," said Rendilee Wortham, owner of Laundry
Haven. She and her husband plug away 12 hours a day, seven days a
week, cleaning the dirty garb.

Their small enterprise got lucky, as did many others in the quiet
town, which is accustomed to outfitting summer-recreation
enthusiasts.

The rail business, on the other hand, remains challenged. It will be
late this month at the earliest before the rail line is restored,
Union Pacific has said.

Meanwhile, 15 freight trains that used the line now detour through
Bend, Ore., and Salt Lake City, causing delays of one to two days.
Large freight movers in the Northwest report that delays in getting
empty rail cars have held up shipments of some materials to
California.

Amtrak's Coast Starlight between Seattle and Los Angeles has been
suspended, disrupting travel for about 1,400 daily passengers.

Amtrak restored a portion of the service in February between Los
Angeles and Sacramento. On Friday, Amtrak said it would add bus
service between Sacramento and Portland, with stops in the Oregon
cities of Medford, Eugene and Salem. Amtrak Cascades service still
runs between Eugene and Vancouver, Canada.

Amtrak expects to relaunch the Coast Starlight in May, said Amtrak
spokeswoman Vernae Graham. "We're all very hopeful," she said.

"The slide is massive," Graham said. "It's unlike any slide we've
seen in recent years."

Union Pacific engineers were alerted to the Oregon mudslide when a
signal indicated a section of track had been knocked out.

The size of the Jan. 19 slide on Coyote Mountain - a remote area
north of Chemult and about 15 miles east of Oakridge - shocked
engineers.

The railroad company estimates it covered 20 acres and was 200 feet
deep - a total of 2.3 million cubic yards. "When we started looking
at it, we realized that it was huge," said Zoe Richmond, a
spokeswoman for Union Pacific in Oakland.

Complicating matters, about 700,000 board feet of old-growth timber
fell, turning the track rebuilding effort into a logging as well as
excavation operation.

"We had these huge old-growth trees to move out of the way before we
could do anything else," she said.

Helicopters clear stumps and fallen trees. More than 125 pieces of
equipment, such as excavators and haul trucks, manipulate huge loads
on the site. Working 12-hour shifts, crews have carted off 625
train-car loads of loose dirt and silt and have moved 211 train-car
loads of logs. In turn, they bring in rocks to stabilize the zone.

Oakridge, a magnet for outdoor recreation enthusiasts in the summer,
doesn't seem to mind the influx of rail workers. Winter is normally
a laid-back time. Not so this year.

"No vacancy" signs hang from motels. Restaurants open early and
close late. Nearly every business has benefited from the slide, said
Randy Dreiling, owner of Oregon Adventures mountain bike company and
executive director of the Oakland-Westfir Area Chamber of Commerce.

Dreiling said he felt bad for the railroad ("they are losing millions
and spending millions"), but he said "it couldn't have happened at a
better time for this little town."

Not only are motels, vacation rentals and bed-and-breakfasts full,
residents are even renting out extra bedrooms to repair crews.

"There's no recession in Oakridge," Dreiling said. "We're lucky up
here right now."

Tony Bailey
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Tonymercury · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 5:41 am

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/us/03land.html?sq=%20train&st=nyt&adxnnl=1&scp=2&adxnnlx=1204549724-XPjyVP1sqcdPQrmPx38l+A

In a Town Called Bill, a Boomlet of Sorts

For decades this speck of a place called Bill had one, two or five
residents, depending on whether you counted pets. But recent
developments have increased the population to at least 11, so that
now Bill is more a dot than a speck, and could be justified if one
day it started to call itself William.

In mid-December those developments appeared like some Christmas
mirage: a 112-room hotel and a 24-hour diner. Here. In Bill. Amid the
swallowing nothingness of grasslands, where all that moves are the
wind, the antelope, the cars speeding to someplace else — and those
ever-slithering trains.

Day and night the trains, each one well more than a mile long,
rattling north with dozens of empty cars to the coal mines of the
Powder River Basin, then groaning south with thousands of tons of
coal. They clink and clank behind the cramped general store and
shuttered post office to create the soundtrack of Bill.

But Bill is also a crew-change station for the Union Pacific railroad
company, which means that dozens of conductors, engineers and other
railroaders on the coal line take their mandatory rest here. Few of
them want to be in Bill, but in Bill they must stay. They are its
transients, forever lugging their lanterns, gloves and gear.

For many years the railroaders stayed in what they called, without
affection, the Bill Hilton, a tired, 58-room dormitory near the rail
yard with thin walls and, lately, not enough beds, as the booming
coal business has increased the demand for trains. At 2 in the
morning or 2 in the afternoon, bone-tired workers just off their
shift would wait for a bed to open up, and then hope for sleep to
come.

Union Pacific addressed the situation by working with a hotel company
called Lodging Enterprises. The company agreed to build a hotel and
diner in, essentially, nowhere, and Union Pacific guaranteed most of
the rooms for its weary railroaders.

This is why, one day last August, a woman named Deloris Renteria
found herself driving up desolate Highway 59, having just accepted a
job as general manager of a yet-to-be-built Oak Tree Inn and Penny’s
Diner in some place called Bill. But she drove right past Bill,
missing it entirely. And when she turned around to face the
remoteness, she had one thought:

Oh my God. This is Bill.

The history of Bill is recorded in age-brittled papers and newspaper
articles kept behind the bar at the back of Bill’s general store. It
seems that a doctor settled here during World War I, and that his
wife came up with the town’s name after observing that several area
men were all called Bill.

There came a small post office, and a small store selling sandwiches
to truckers, and a small school for children from surrounding
ranches, and little else, except for those trains. At one point the
owner of the general store established the Bill Yacht Club: no boats,
no water, no costly boating accidents. He sold hats and T-shirts to
tourists who felt in on the joke.

At first Ms. Renteria thought the joke was on her. She is 50, the
single mother of four adult children; seeking isolation was not her
life’s goal. But she had a job to do, with a steady stream of
clients, almost all of them railroaders passing through, stepping up
to the counter at the diner, signing in, signing out.

Now, she says, she likes Bill. When she steps out a back door for a
cigarette, she sees nothing but beautiful nothingness.

The hotel in Bill — some call it the Bill Ritz-Carlton — is open to
everyone, but is especially designed to accommodate these
railroaders. For example, in keeping with a contractual agreement
between the railroad company and the unions, it must have a break
room, an exercise room and, very importantly, a card table.

Because railroading is hardly a 9-to-5 profession, each room has
window shades designed to thwart any peek of daylight and thick walls
to snuff out sounds like vacuuming. The hotel also has a “guest
finder” system that uses heat sensors to signal if someone is in a
room, possibly resting, almost certainly uninterested in a cheery
call of “Housekeeping!”

The Ritz of Bill still has its growing pains, its clash between two
cultures — hotels and railroads — as evidenced by a slightly
misspelled sign on the diner’s door: “Union Pacific Guest: Please
remove kleats before entering building. Automatic $50 fine for
violation!!!!!! Thank you for your cooperation.”

Providing mild counterpoint is Jarod Lessert, 35, a train engineer
and one of Bill’s long-time transients, who has just checked out of
the hotel. He is sipping a Diet Coke at the general store’s back bar
while waiting for midnight, when he will drive a coal-loaded train
the 12 hours back to South Morrill, Neb., where he lives and prefers
to sleep.

He says the new hotel is far better than the old dormitory, but adds
that some of the hotel’s rules are plainly ridiculous. He also
expresses shock at the prices in the diner: “Nine dollars for an
omelette?”

Actually, an omelette costs $7.99, plus tax, with meat, hash browns,
toast and drink. But at least now you can have an omelette here.

At least Greg Mueller, a manager of train operations, can eat a hot
roast beef sandwich ($7.49) while thinking about a hill nearby where
he can see the crisscross of trains below and the constellation of
stars above. At least Marty Castrogiovanni, another manager, can sip
a coffee ($1.46) while marvelling that Bill, tiny Bill, is part of
what may be the busiest train line in the world, in terms of tonnage.

At least now you can look up from your omelette, overpriced or not, and
see through the window another train carting part of Wyoming away.

Day and night, those trains, creating a consuming sound undeterred by
special curtains and thick walls. It is a sound of money being made,
lights turning on and the disturbed earth rumbling at your feet. It
is the sound of a dot called Bill, too busy to sleep.

Tony Bailey
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Tonymercury · Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 4:25 am

RGI-
06 Mar 2008
Union Pacific boosts spending

USA: Union Pacific announced on February 1 that its board had approved a capital investment budget of $3·1bn for 2008. Of this, no less than $1·6bn will go on maintenance and upgrading of infrastructure, plus a further $840m to increase network and terminal capacity. UP plans to invest $490m on rolling stock during the year, including 175 additional high-horsepower diesel locomotives and a new fleet of covered hopper wagons. A budget of $170m has been set for IT projects including further development and testing of Positive Train Control.

A week earlier, UP issued its fourth-quarter results for 2007, with a net income of $491m up from $485m for the same quarter in 2006. Chairman & CEO Jim Young said this represented 'revenue growth on flat volume and improved operational efficiency'. UP's total operating revenue in 2007 reached $16·3bn, 5% ahead of 2006, but the railway reported a 17% increase in operating income to $3·4bn giving a net income of $1·86bn and a return on capital of 8·7%.

BNSF, UP's main competitor in the western US markets, announced on January 29 a $2·49bn capital investment programme for 2008, including more than $200m for capacity enhancement and $400m to lease a further 200 locomotives.

Tony Bailey
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Tonymercury · Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 5:05 am

http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.cms.support.viewStory.cls?cid=85154&sid=4&fid=2
Rail line repair drags past initial estimate
By Tim Christie
The Register-Guard
Published: March 29, 2008 12:00AM

(Photo)
Kevin Clark/The Register-Guard
A landslide that closed the Union Pacific railroad tracks near
Frazier on Jan. 19, 2008, will probably not be open for several more
months. A quarry near the site is supplying the rock necessary to
build new roadbed and to stabilize the slopes above the tracks.

Work continues on the massive Frazier landslide that wiped out a
section of Union Pacific’s track near Oakridge, severing the
railroad’s main north-south line in Oregon.

Union Pacific won’t say when the project might be completed. Railroad
officials initially said it would be done by the end of March, but
that turns out to have been overly optimistic.

“Obviously we’re at the end of March now,” Union Pacific spokeswoman
Zoe Richmond said Friday. “Our deadline has been pushed back. We’re a
little hesitant to say when the line will re-open completely.”

A record snow year in the Cascades — including more snow in recent
days — “really hinders our progress,” she said. At Salt Creek Falls,
not far from the slide, snowpack was measured at 7 feet earlier this
week.

The line repair “has been a huge endeavour and continues to be so,”
Richmond said. “We’ve made some progress.”

The 60-acre slide occurred Jan. 19 on Coyote Mountain, about eight
miles southeast of Oakridge, wiping out 1,500 feet of track in one
spot and another 150 feet below that where the railroad switches back
down the steep slope. Railroad officials say it’s the most serious
natural disaster to hit Oregon’s main line in 40 years.

Unstable hillsides, heavy snowfall and downed trees have made for a
complex project. Crews are working to move more than 2.3 million
cubic yards of mud and debris. The slide knocked down more than
700,000 board feet of timber.

The slide is costing the railroad many millions of dollars in lost
revenue and disrupting freight and passenger train service, but the
more than 150 workers that UP has brought in are proving a boon for
Oakridge businesses during what is normally a slow time of year in
the economically strapped town.

“It’s much better than a normal winter,” said Hal Lane, co-owner of
Big Mountain Pizza. “Normal winters are pretty quiet.”

His restaurant has been “pretty busy” serving meals to the workers on
the project, he said, and businesses all over town are seeing
benefit.

Dan Barclay, owner of the Cascade Motel, said he’s been full up since
Jan. 20, the day after the slide occurred, and will remain so for the
foreseeable future.

“We’re not expecting any relief anytime soon,” he said.

Barclay and his wife, Elizabeth, bought the motel about a year ago
and remodelled seven of the 10 rooms. The week before the slide, they
were discussing when to do the remaining three. Now, they don’t know
when they’ll get a chance to renovate.

Railroad and contract crews totalling 150 workers and more than 100
machines are working to stabilize the base of the slope. Tons of
gravel and rock are being used to stabilize the slope, reinforce
roads and create a roadbed on the side of the mountain, Richmond
said.

“You’re kind of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again,” she said.

Most of the rock being used to repair the rail line is coming from a
quarry near the slide, Richmond said.

“Local residents have probably heard a couple explosions when they
have to blast out some of the rock and crush it into smaller parts,”
she said.

In addition to rock taken from the quarry near the site, the railroad
also is stockpiling rock at its Eugene railyard and transporting it
by rail car to build and reinforce roads and staging areas near the
slide, she said.

Tony Bailey
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Tonymercury · Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:57 am

06/16/2008
Tower to give railroad buffs optimum view
By: Paul Hammel , Midlands News Service

NORTH PLATTE, Neb. -- Shelly Harshaw soon will ditch the nastiest part of her job.

As executive director since January of the Golden Spike Tower and Visitor Center, Harshaw has been shooing away curious visitors all spring while construction continued on the 15-story structure overlooking North Platte's huge, bustling railroad yards.

The visitors have included tourists from as far away as New Zealand and Japan, a group of bird-watchers and 15 bikers from Michigan.

Monday at 10 a.m., that job will end as the $4.5 million tourist attraction officially opens. A formal grand opening is planned for June 26.

"It's going to be exhilarating to share the beautiful view with the public,'' Harshaw said.

It's been a long pull for the Golden Spike, envisioned 12 years ago to attract the railroad buffs who travel to North Platte to view the Bailey Yard, the world's busiest railroad classification yards, where 150 trains pass a day.

Some local residents questioned the need for and cost of such a facility -- which replaces an aging wooden platform only a few feet high. The design and location changed several times before its current site was chosen, just west of North Platte near the huge Union Pacific diesel shop.

"I'm just blessed that we had a very passionate board, which stuck through a lot,'' said Harshaw, a North Platte native who had worked as state director of the national railroad safety initiative, Operation Lifesaver.

The Spike initially was intended to open before Nebraskaland Days, the state festival in North Platte that began Thursday.

But poor winter and spring weather postponed some work, and the contractor, Simon Contractors Co. of North Platte, couldn't turn over the keys to the building until Wednesday .

The visitor centre, designed by North Platte architect Lee Davies, looks like an old-time railroad depot. The 100-foot tower, resembling an airport control tower, looms above.

"It's a unique structure,'' said Dale Burkhead, the senior construction superintendent. "Everyone took a lot of pride in working on it.''

On Thursday, workers were hauling in furniture and display cases, tuning up computers and installing cameras that will eventually provide 24/7 video, via the Internet, of the disassembling and assembling of freight trains.

Touch-screen video kiosks, which will provide everything from railroad-related kids' games to quizzes for adults, will be installed sometime this week, as will replica depot benches.

The parking lot will be doubled in size next year, and there's talk of adding a display of railroad cars and a meeting room for events.

Dozens of retired U.P. workers have volunteered to work at the Spike, which has a paid staff of five.

Harshaw, who worked with railroad buffs in her past job, said she thinks the Spike will surpass attendance expectations, initially set at 20,000 a year. A city occupation tax on hotel stays provides a financial cushion, she said.

There is strong national and international interest in trains, with buffs parking along tracks, setting up in lawn chairs and even trespassing in rail yards to take photographs of specific locomotives, she said. Some make it a goal to catalogue, and photograph, every engine owned by a railroad, Harshaw said.

"This is the best place to find (those engines),'' she said. "People here are so used to the railroad that they didn't realize the potential.''

But a new Rail Fest event that debuted in North Platte last fall
drew 12,000 visitors. Expectations for this year's event, Sept. 19-21, are higher because of the tower's completion.

"You can just imagine this town becoming Rail Town, U.S.A.,'' Harshaw said.

Tony Bailey
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Tonymercury · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:52 am

UP continues sponsorship of tank car safety course

Union Pacific Wednesday said 24 emergency response personnel representing 12 states spanning the nation had completed the most recent tank car safety course sponsored by the railroad.

The five-day, 40-hour course was held at the Association of American Railroad's Transportation Technology Center near Pueblo, Colo. UP covered all attendees' expenses, with no cost to communities or organizations.

The training covers a variety of safety subjects including how to identify tank car types, fittings and tank car construction features during an emergency. Participants also receive hands-on experience in assessing tank car damage, making repairs, controlling the release of hazardous materials from damaged rail cars and using protective clothing and self-contained breathing apparatus.

Tony Bailey
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Tonymercury · Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 6:31 am

From: Doug Wooten

Union Pacific June 2008 Roster Changes

GP38-2L Deliveries (1 unit):
LLPX 2293 (Note 1)

C45ACCTE Deliveries (13 units):
UP 7900, 7910, 7914-7924

SD70ACe Deliveries (23 units):
UP 8621-8643

First Union Rail Lease Return (15 units):
FURX SD40-2 3051, 7218, 7220, 7924, 7926, 7929, 7940, 8093, 8105, 8114,
8119-8122, 8136

GATX Lease Return (1 unit):
GMTX GP38-2L 2685

GE Capital Lease Return (31 units):
GECX SD40 7325, 7336
GECX SD40T-2 2868, 2872-2876, 2878-2880, 2897, 8308-8310, 8312, 8313, 8362,
8492, 8497, 8548, 8631, 8634, 8635, 8644, 8650, 8652, 8661, 8663, 8664
GECX SD40T-2R 856

Helm Financial Corporation Lease Return (20 units):
HLCX SD40T-2 6102, 6103, 6106, 6131-6133, 6142, 6144, 6145, 6148-6150, 6152,
6159, 6160, 6335-6338, 6340

Retired Units (77 units):
UP 743 (GP38-2L), retired 6/16/08
UP 755 (GP38-2L), retired 6/16/08
UP 760 (GP38-2L), retired 6/16/08
UP 776 (GP38-2L), retired 6/16/08
UP 971 (GP50), retired 6/11/08
UP 982 (GP50), retired 6/11/08
UP 1108 (SW1500), retired 6/11/08
UP 1668 (GP50), retired 6/11/08
UP 1670 (GP50), retired 6/11/08
UP 1671 (GP50), retired 6/11/08
UP 1673 (GP50), retired 6/11/08
UP 1675 (GP50), retired 6/11/08
UP 1681 (GP50), retired 6/11/08
UP 1682 (GP50), retired 6/11/08
UP 1683 (GP50), retired 6/11/08
UP 1687 (GP50), retired 6/11/08
UP 2826-2865 (SD40T-2), retired 6/26/08
UP 8911-8931 (SD90MAC), retired 6/25/08

Renumbers (14 units):
UP 1335 (GP40-2), renumbered from SSW 7962 on 6/17/08
UP 2742 (SD40M-2), renumbered from SP 8758 on 6/23/08
UP 6247 (C44AC), renumbered from UP 6895 on 6/13/08
UP 6899 (C60AC), renumbered from UP 7512 on 6/27/08 (Note 2)
UP 6902 (C60AC), renumbered from UP 7515 on 6/02/08 (Note 2)
UP 6904 (C60AC), renumbered from UP 7517 on 6/4/08 (Note 2)
UPY 3200 (SD40-2R), renumbered from UP 3238 on 6/18/08
UPY 3201 (SD40-2R), renumbered from UP 3240 on 6/18/08
UPY 3202 (SD40-2R), renumbered from UP 3244 on 6/12/08
UPY 3203 (SD40-2R), renumbered from UP 3255 on 6/12/08
UPY 3204 (SD40-2R), renumbered from UP 3258 on 6/12/08
UPY 3205 (SD40-2R), renumbered from UP 3275 on 6/19/08
UPY 3206 (SD40-2R), renumbered from UP 3285 on 6/16/08
UPY 3207 (SD40-2R), renumbered from UP 3294 on 6/19/08

Notes:
1. Replacing GMTX 2685 on the lease.
2. Units converted into C44/60AC.

Tony Bailey
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Tonymercury · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 6:12 am

Creating capacity
Growth capital is a priority at UP, and the payoff is impressive.
By William C. Vantuono, Editor Railway Age

Want to talk about capacity? How about a 100-car unit train rumbling out the Powder River Basin coal fields every 48 minutes? Or 140 trains of all types rolling on a triple-track main line across the Nebraska prairies? Or, taking a broader view, 3,000 trains moving on a 32,000-mile system covering 23 states? This Herculean performance is all in a day's work for the Union Pacific, which is spending $3.1 billion this year in capital improvements, including $841 million to create new network and terminal capacity.

Due mainly to its sheer physical size, but also to a historic commitment to first-class track and rolling stock, no other Class I invests as much in plant and equipment as UP. That commitment remains in place at a time when other industries, in an economy that’s now in recession, are retrenching and cutting back. UP’s 2008 capital improvement budget is identical to 2007’s record high of $3 billion-plus, even though overall traffic has slipped and fuel costs have climbed to stratospheric levels. One difference is that this year’s budget nearly doubles the amount spent on creating capacity.

“We looked at our mix of capital projects and moved some dollars around,” says Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer Jim Young. “But we must continue investing. Otherwise, there won’t be enough capacity for future growth.” For 2008, in addition to the $841 million for network and terminal capacity, UP budgeted $1 billion for maintenance-of-way and $460 million for locomotives and freight cars. Over the next three to five years, says Young, there should be no significant change in these allocations, unless the economy takes a more serious downturn. UP still has several major unfilled capital improvement needs. “We have at least three years to go on our Sunset Corridor double-tracking program, and we may stretch it out a bit longer,” Young says. “We may allocate more money to our Central Corridor (which serves Chicago). We’re also putting greater priority on capacity improvements that can be achieved through process improvements. However, it’s hard to predict where we will be five years from now.”

UP, like its smaller Class I siblings, is riding the wave of a railroad industry resurgence that so far has defied a recessionary economy that has hurt competing transportation modes. In bearish times, Wall Street has been taking a bullish view of railroads. A share of UP common stock, for example, has increased 20% during the past 12 months, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has declined 20%. Railroads generally are outperforming the market, as indicated by UP’s second-quarter financials, in which it posted record growth in diluted earnings per share, net and operating income, and operating revenue.

“In a general sense, the value of rail is starting to show up in the global logistics chain,” says Young. “Service and productivity have improved. The coal and agricultural business is doing very well. People are looking for a safe harbour for investments and see value in railroads. Tightening of capacity is starting to generate positive, consistent price trends.” Indeed, it’s pricing power that’s largely responsible for driving UP’s revenues and earnings to record levels.

Though no industry (with the possible exceptions of undertakers and tax preparers) is recession-proof, the railroads have been able to make the most of their inherent flexibility, and their growing importance in global logistics. “Look at our swings in traffic,” says Young. “Agriculture and coal are up. Housing and motor vehicles are down. Our export business, with the world’s demand for coal and the value of the U.S. dollar, is growing. I’m not sure if this is a trend, but our business has really been impacted by the world economy. In terms of the U.S. economy, which is cycle-driven, we’re much less dependent on it, and less impacted by swings, than we used to be.”

One sector important to UP’s prosperity (and railroad prosperity in general) is the surge in biofuels production, ethanol in particular, which appears to be here for the long term. “For UP, ethanol is a $300 million a year business, including DDGs (distiller’s dried grains),” Young notes. “The ag sector is pretty hot worldwide, and we expect it to be strong for a long time to come.”

Analysts agree. Elliott Gue, an energy sector expert, recently remarked that “railroads are a play on three big secular themes: the drive for increased energy efficiency, growth in coal, and the agriculture boom. They are no longer totally dependent on the U.S. economy for growth. It’s no longer appropriate to look at [them] as viciously economy-sensitive. The traditional relationship between the broader market and the rails has been breaking down for several years, but this trend appears to be accelerating. Union Pacific . . . offers a convenient example of the bullish forces at work, particularly in the coal and agriculture industries. UP’s energy segment is its largest by revenue; it accounts for just shy of 20% of the company’s business. Strong demand for coal has made this segment a real bright spot for the railroad in recent years. Better still, UP still transports coal under contracts signed years ago at lower freight rates. As these contracts expire, it should see strong pricing gains as it signs new deals. Agriculture is its most profitable business in terms of average revenue per car. . . . The chemicals segment is a solid, growing business. Demand for fertilizers is booming because of rising prices for agricultural commodities. And shipments of petroleum-related chemicals have also remained firm. . . . The railroads are taking steps to cut their costs and improve the traffic flow across their lines. UP has implemented a scheduled railway, adopted a sophisticated computer system and locomotives designed to reduce fuel consumption, and added capacity on parts of its network where there are visible bottlenecks. The result: Its costs have been falling, and network reliability has been improving. These steps have added to profitability.”

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Tonymercury · Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 5:56 am

COYOTE MOUNTAIN — The dirt kept coming, day after day, thousands of cubic yards of it loaded onto rail cars and dump trucks, and Forest Service geologist Mark Leverton had to figure out where to put it all.

The torrent of rocks, mud and trees, more than a million tons worth, hurtled down the mountain eight miles southeast of Oakridge when the earth gave way the morning of Jan. 19. Truck-size boulders and 150-year-old Douglas firs that had snapped off like matchsticks rode a slurry that tore out 1,500 feet of railroad track in one location, buried a short section of track below that and obliterated sections of two Forest Service roads before stopping several hundred yards above Salt Creek.

A disaster of epic proportions from the perspective of Union Pacific Railroad, the landslide was a fairly typical event in the geologic lifespan of the Cascade Range.

In the immediate days afterward — snowy, dismal days that hampered everyone’s ability to get a grip on the massive scope of the problem — Union Pacific and Willamette National Forest Service officials put their heads together to figure out how to quickly restore a vital transportation link in the Interstate 5 corridor, yet minimize harm to pristine public lands within the national forest.

Seven months later, the railroad repair job is mostly done, but the impacts to the forest will unfold for years to come on the 60 acres of the slide itself, the 27 acres that became dumping grounds for the mud, and Salt Creek — key salmon habitat meandering along the base of the mountain.

A landslide in the Cascades is good news and bad news from a habitat perspective, said Leverton. On the downside, it can wipe out stands of mature trees, home to a range of critters from tree voles to northern spotted owls — birds at risk of extinction who can’t really afford to lose habitat. The exposed bare soil also makes a great place for invasive species to anchor and grow,

Fine silt from such a landslide flows into and muddies creeks and streams. That’s what happened in the weeks after the Frazier landslide. Coyote Creek begins as rivulets coursing down the face of the mountain before blending into a single stream meandering across a wetlands to flow into Salt Creek, key habitat for at-risk Chinook salmon. The creek turned root beer brown.

Salt Creek and the Middle Fork of the Willamette also ran muddy for days with clouds of silt that likely did harm to the salmon just hatching at that time of year.

On the upside, landslides are a principal method for putting downed trees into streams. Those trees provide a range of benefits, creating hiding places for young fish, nutrients for insects the fish feed on and filters that trap and hold gravel the fish need for spawning. Downed trees also open up space for meadows that attract foraging creatures such as elk and deer.

Human activities — road building and clear cutting — frequently get the blame for landslides, but Forest Service geologists don’t think that’s what happened on the Frazier slide,

The ground gave way just below a narrow logging road and partially across a 15-year-old clear-cut. But the majority of the failure occurred in a stand of trees well over 100 years old.

The chaotic mayhem that occurred that January morning or the frenetic work of bulldozers and backhoes that followed in February and March is hard to believe when one visits the site in summer.

The railroad tracks run level on neat beds of fresh gravel. Above the upper tracks that sustained the most damage, about 20 acres of bare dirt slopes sharply, tinged a yellow brown from a seed-growing medium. The first faint tufts of grass planted to help anchor what’s left have begun to sprout. Along the tracks Union Pacific has installed high fence posts with wires that will trip and alert the railroad if the land slumps again.

The 40 acres below that is all boulder and gravel, installed by the railroad almost down to bedrock level to create a safe, solid support structure for the rail bed. It looks like a grey gash against the otherwise green hillside, but Leverton said the rocks provide habitat for pikas, a hamster-sized furry creature related to rabbits.

The tracks double back in a long hairpin turn to descend the mountainside, and below the lower tracks, the Forest Service has chosen to mostly let the rumpled land lie. The eight to 10 feet of slide burying Forest Road 5876 will remain there, a Volkswagen-sized boulder sitting amid the dirt and strewn trees. Only a small portion of the debris on nearby Forest Service Road 399 will be cleared to allow Union Pacific access to a water drainage system. Coyote Creek flows perpendicular to the roads, clear and cold just now, as does Salt Creek below it.

“We’ll have a water quality issue out of Coyote Creek and Salt Creek for some unknown number of years, but we’re through the worst of it,” Leverton said.

The last piece of this landslide puzzle: massive mounds of dirt.

Union Pacific officials first thought they would use the rocks and mud to shore up the mountain and use as part of their rail bed, but that turned out to be impossible, said Dave Orrell, general contractor for Union Pacific.

“It was almost liquid in form,” he said. “There was no way you could use it as engineered fill that could withstand the weight of a train.”

While they hauled in tons of rock from four quarries, they hauled away the slurry in rail cars and dump trucks. It was so wet it oozed where ever they tried to place it, Orrell said.

“It would just run down the slope until it found a flat spot,” he said.

The railroad and Forest Service eventually selected five dumping locations, all of them along the railroad tracks, about 27 acres total to dump 1 million tons of debris. They built up snow and gravel berms — Leverton calls them big bathtubs — to contain the wet mess. In some locations, the snow, insulated by the gravel berms, is still melting.

At Wicopee, a dump spot just a couple of miles northwest of the lower slide area, about 30 feet of dirt was spread over eight acres. It covers part of a 25- to 30-year old tree plantation, Leverton said. The trees were cut down first — the dirt pile would have killed them — then the wood was chipped and the mulch spread across the dirt, which doesn’t have much in the way of nutrients to support tree growth just yet, he said. Plants effective at quickly adding nitrogen to the soil will be planted, while some of the downed logs from the slide are placed on it to create habitat for a range of plants and animals. Though trees may eventually come back in this area, a broad meadow attractive to elk will be the most likely result, he said.

The Forest Service will monitor all the dump sites. Should invasive species take hold, Union Pacific will come back, remove them and replant.

The railroad has paid for the cleanup, including the hours of Forest Service staffers such as Leverton, who functioned as an agency liaison during the work. Union Pacific hasn’t disclosed its costs, said Orrell, in part because restoration work continues.

Railroad officials have previously said it will be a multi-million-dollar effort.

Forest Service and railroad officials both say they worked well together, with daily briefings that dealt with a range of issues. Among the records requested by The Register-Guard were documents that verified close contact between the forest service and the railroad, including a contractor hired by Union Pacific whose sole focus was to make sure the railroad complied with federal law.

On-site explosions at a nearby rock quarry couldn’t be carried out until foresters had considered the possible negative impact on nearby northern spotted owls, for example. And one of the debris piles encroached on a site that had historical significance, a scatter of obsidian suggesting it had been a place where Indians made tools. Where they ran into conflicts, both sides were professional about working them out, Leverton said.

“Considering the magnitude, the Forest Service did an exceptional job trying to get us back in service.” Orrell said.

But not everyone is happy with the federal agency.

Some environmental advocates believe that human activity was at least partly responsible for this slide and they’d like to see logging on such steep slopes banned on public forests.

“Doing any sort of risky practice on such a major artery is a foolish gamble,” said Josh Schlossberg with Cascadia Ecosystem Advocates. Schlossberg visited the slide during the winter, snowshoeing in to see the logging road above it, and revisiting it last week for another look.

Management practices aside, landslides are a feature of the local topography, Leverton said.

“The Cascades are one of the youngest land forms on the planet,” he said. “Because they’re young, they’re steep. Gravity and precipitation are trying to make them flat as quick as they can.”

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Tonymercury · Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 6:02 am

Genset shunters begin work
26 Aug 2008

USA: Union Pacific has begun testing four RP20SD 2000 hp genset locomotives built by Railpower for the Roseville hump yard 30 km northeast of Sacramento.

The locos use the frames and bogies of scrapped six-axle EMD road switchers, and have three gensets onboard with room for a fourth to be installed later. Each loco will work as a pair with an EMD SD38-2.

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Tonymercury · Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 6:38 am

RAILChicago
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Federal court awards $4.4 million to Union Pacific

The Journal Record August 28, 2008

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK - A federal court in Muskogee has awarded Union Pacific Railroad Co. a $4.4 million judgment against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for damages the railway company suffered following a May 2003 derailment about a mile south of Eufaula.

According to the court's opinion, Lake Eufaula is a civil works project under jurisdiction and control of the United States, through the corps of engineers.
The derailment involved 36 cars of a 98-car Union Pacific train carrying a wide variety of freight.
Only an engineer and conductor were on board at the time.
Both were in the front engine, which did not derail.
Many feet of track were placed and a rail bridge was constructed following the derailment.
The court said that as the train passed over metal culverts installed in a dirt embankment, the culverts collapsed.
A witness for Union Pacific testified that the culverts should have been constructed of reinforced concrete.
The federal court found for Union Pacific on its claims for negligent breach of contract and negligent failure to maintain and inspect the culverts, finding that the corps of engineers breached the duty of care it owed Union Pacific.
"No expert in the field who testified at trial condoned the use of metal pipes in a submerged area," the court said. "Indeed, to a man, the experts agree that had reinforced concrete been utilized in the construction of the culverts, the collapse and resulting derailment would have been avoided."
The court also refused to enforce an exculpatory clause in the parties' contract, saying that enforcement of the clause, which would permit the corps to avoid liability, would be injurious to the public.
Officials with Union Pacific and the corps of engineers were not immediately available for comment.

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Tonymercury · Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2008 6:21 am

Union Pacific August 2008 Roster Changes

SD70ACe Deliveries (11 units):
UP 8660-8670

UP Exchange (1 unit) (Note 1):
RPRX GG20GP 2406

HLCX Lease Exchange (1 unit) (Note 2):
HLCX GP38-2 3835

Retired (3 units):
GMTX 2640 GP38-2, retired on 8/05/08 (Note 3)
GMTX 2642 GP38-2, retired on 8/05/08 (Note 3)
GMTX 2677 GP38-2, retired on 8/05/08 (Note 3)

Renumbers (11 units):
UP 6250 (C44AC), renumbered from SP 239 on 8/20/08
UP 6903 (C44/60AC), renumbered from UP 7516 on 8/01/08 (Note 4)
UP 6916 (C44/60AC), renumbered from UP 7529 on 8/14/01 (Note 4)
UP 7011 (C44/60AC), renumbered from UP 7377 on 8/01/08
UP 7013 (C44/60AC), renumbered from UP 7384 on 8/08/08
UP 7014 (C44/60AC), renumbered from UP 7383 on 8/14/08

Notes:
1. Replaces UPY 2004.
2. Replaces HLCX 2527 while Helm does high altitude testing.
3. Returned off lease. These where replacement units for lease overhauls.
Overhauls complete units going back.
4. Converted to 4390 HP FDL C44/60AC

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Tonymercury · Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2008 6:23 am

UP sets new coal-loading records

Union Pacific announced that it loaded a new monthly record of 1,190 coal trains in the Southern Powder River Basin in August, beating the previous record of 1,174 trains in July. On Aug. 10, UP set an all-time daily record of 50 trains loaded on the SPRB Joint Line, which UP shares with BNSF Railway. The previous high was 46 trains loaded on Nov. 29, 2007.

A total of 2,197 trains were loaded on the Joint Line in August, with 81 trains loaded on Aug. 16 and a monthly daily average of 70.87 trains loaded—in each case, an all-time record for a single month.

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Tonymercury · Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 6:14 am

Maglev may find an intermodal niche at UP

A $400 million expansion plan under consideration by Union Pacific for its Los Angeles-Long Beach Intermodal Container Transfer facility could include a magnetic levitation (maglev) system to move containers between the docks and the rail yard. An electric truck pilot program is among other environmental initiatives that the railroad outlined at a meeting of the ICTF Joint Powers Authority on Sept. 3.

UP hopes to double its container-handling capacity at the facility by 2025 and at the same shrink its size to 177 acres from the current 233 and reduce emissions by 74%. The environmental review process could begin as early as this month, with a draft statement due by next March.

UP said it will work with Skytech Transportation Inc. and American Maglev Technology to explore the feasibility of a maglev container conveyance system. UP is also talking with Balqon Corp., which has developed a heavy-duty electric drayage truck, reportedly the first in this country. The U. S. Department of Transportation is expected to certify the truck for road service later this year.

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