Derail and Cleanup at Santa Fe Junction (Kansas City)

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

This just recently happened to, nice video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkui84o6rNA

2

I watched quite a bit of it, along with up to 6,000 others, but the “quick view” had stuff I missed. Very interesting.

3

What do you suppose it costs to have that equipment and that many men there to fix that?

4

Don’t know they going rates - or who the ‘contractor of record’ was - considering the manpower and equipment I saw being used my guess would be in the 1/2 to 3/4 million dollar range.

I feature the railroad called their ‘preferred’ derailment contractor for that area - the contractor ordered in the necessary equipment and manpower - both their own and from other suppliers if their equipment wasn’t up to the job.

5

Herzog and Hulcher are close by - the heavy mobile crane outfit is local (they do not move very far or very fast - and there are precious few of 'em.)

Ka-ching $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ (no way the operating department can avoid flunking the unit of property test here…)

6

With both Herzog & Hulcher being in the area, I am going to guess one is the ‘preferred’ contractor for one of the Class 1 carriers and the other is the ‘preferred’ contractor for the other Class 1 carrier. However, there always can be situations where the carriers preferred contractor is busy and they have to use their second choice.

Contractors will call in any equipment (and its operators) that is needed and is not a part of their own arsenal of equipment…

7

At the risk of stating the obvious - those heavy lift cranes are expensive. That the contractor had enough of them on hand to respond that quickly tends to say they’ve got a good collection of them.

That also means they can pretty much set their own price (especially for a short notice call like this)…

8

The heavy lift crane were from a local contractor

https://www.wilkersoncranerental.com/

9

Yep.