Railroad Engineering - BNSF Abo Canyon, Memphis IT, & Burlington Bridge

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

This past Friday afternoon - November 19, 2010 - Robert J. Boileau, P.E. of BNSF Railway gave a presentation as part of the William W. Hay Railroad Engineering Seminar series for the Fall Semester 2010 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. It consisted of 136 PowerPoint slides, which were mainly about and illustrated very well the Abo Canyon, New Mexico double-tracking project; the Memphis, Tennessee Intermodal Terminal expansion; and the replacement of Bridge 204.66 at Burlington, Iowa. For your convenience, I’ve compiled and posted below a summary list of the contents of the presentation.

You can view and download that presentation by going to the UIUC’s Railroad Engineering Seminar webpage at - http://ict.illinois.edu/railroad/CEE/seminar.asp and then scrolling down to the 11/19 listing and clicking on the link for the “Capital Expansion Program for the BNSF Railway” at -

http://ict.illinois.edu/railroad/CEE/pdf/PPT’s/Fall10/Boileau/University%20of%20Illinois%2011-19-10.ppt

NOTE: It’s a pretty huge file - 108 MegaBytes in size - and it took me around 10 minutes to download it with both a T-1 fiber-optic line at work, and a DSL line at home. Perhaps the University’s server is the limiting constraint here, but for a 3 KB/ second dial-up connection you could be looking at soemthing like 8 - 9 hours to download the whole file, so consider yourself forewarned.

  • Paul North.
2

Paul,

Short version, how far along is Abo Canyon? When do they expect to have it two main track?

Mac

3

From Slide 16 - Abo Canyon Schedule:

2009 – Completed rock excavation

2010 – Construct bridges

4

Thanks so much, Paul.

The link was a great reference.

The Abo Canyon photos confirm what I feared, that the construction is in a rather secluded, inaccessible area. But, the photos make up for that …

5

K.P., as much as anyone - you’re most welcome !! [tup]

Besides, we all know who has the better collection of in-process construction photos of the Cajon Pass Triple-Tracking Project. [swg]

Mr. Boileau did say that some of the R-O-W was acquired from the Bureau of Land Management, so perhaps some portions are ‘public’ enough that they could be used to obtain access close to the R-O-W - but I recommend inquiring locally first, of course.

  • Paul North.
6

Paul, thanks for sharing this with us. Informative, especially the bit on Abo Canyon.

7

Thanks for the link. Must say that I haven’t lit PowerPoint off on my computer very much since retirement, but that presentation was quite interesting. Having had my share of complex project involvement over the years, I can appreciate what is involved in things like Memphis and Abo Canyon, even though I never had to deal with the myriad issues outside my government customer, like real estate, environment and local government bozos.

Just knowing that there are probably many happy selsyn motors in use in Memphis is enough to gratify a seriously old EE and make him appreciate retirement.

8

i rode through Abo Canyon on a private car in late September 2010 and it appeared that the bridges were ready for the track installation. The grading approaching the bridges also appeared ready. The signal installation after the track is in place and any crossovers should be expeditious because of the experiences they had with the triple track over Cajon.

But then nothing is as fast today as when we built the Williams-Crookton 44 mile line change in 1959-1960, all done in 16 months. Progress in today’s enviornment???

Signed, A Dinosaur

9

Paul:

I finally got in to view the PowerPoint on Abo Canyon, Memphis, Tn and the Burlington?Miss River Bridge Project.

That is an amazing piece of work! To me the Memphis, Tn. (nee: SLSF Tennessee Yard) was extreemely interesting. I’ve visited there many time since the yard opened in 1956/57.

I was fortunate to have had a friend whose grandfather was a long time SLSF Supervisor, and was IIRC; Superintendent of Terminals at the ‘new’ yard, he retired when the Tenn Yard opened for business.

I have only driven through the area, since BNSF took over and have been mazed with the changes made. From the areials, it looks like they have reinstated what used to be for SLSF, the by-pass track to the South of the Yard. I was originally used as the by-pass for the Passenger trains when SLSF operated them. At one time BN cut it using it for a stub track to store ballast and track supplies on, and then to get to the piggy-back ramp area ( south of the old engine service area and turntable.

Thanks, Paul, for posting the whole power point, it is an unusual and awsome look at this aspect of our Hobby/Avocation. We do not often get to see thses aspects presented in such a connected fashion.

10

Hey, what are those fan looking things at the Memphis intermodel terminal? Slide #52

11

I wondered the same thing. After some thought, I believe they’re glorified extension cord take-up reels - the cranes are electrically-powered, and so there must be some way to get the power to them.

  • Paul North.
12

Paul:

I think your guess on the electrical supply cables for the crans is accurate.

While looking around I found some additional photographs of construction at BNSF Memphis. The website is from Hanson Professional Services:

http://www.hanson-inc.com/projects.aspx?projectid=03rr486

The photo essay gives on an idea of the scale of those cranes fro the ground. Hard to believe their size and that they are mobile!

The new intermodal facility and tracks lay along what was the South side of the Yard. (#1)

The Johns Creek involved the Corps of Engineers because it flows into Nonconnah Cr. which flows into the Mississippi R ( down in the area of the CN Harrison Yd.) ( #2)

Assembly of one of the gantry cranes (#3)

Aerial view ( West to East) (#4)

Aerial view (North to South) West end of Hump Yard, across was old Engine service area. (#5)

Aerialview (from a SSE direction to Westerly0 showing Intermodal partking. (#6)

13

About those cranes-much seemed to be made of the fact that they spanned six tracks for loading/unloading but I don’t see what the attraction is for that. It still can only move boxes to/from one car at a time, regardless of how many others it is lifting those boxes over and, if one crane over six tracks is no faster than one of six cranes that only handles one track, wouldn’t you need the same number (six) to accomplish the same number of lifts? So, why buy six big ones to replace six small ones to do the same job? And of you don’t, why pay for the bigger on in the first place?

Obviously, I’m overlooking something basic…what am I not seeing?

14

Lets say that a train pulls into track 6 and out of 200 boxes, twenty of them need to be moved to a train on track 2. After lifting the box it can move them over tracks 5,4 and three drop them onto a truck which will move them down to the crane loading them onto the train on track 2. The roadway between track 2 and 3, or track 3 and 4 could be used. This way the truck doesn’t have to do an end around with trains on any of the tracks in between. I guess you could say they are for saving time.

15

Flexibility, and more sorting options with each ‘pick’. If the crane could access only 1 other track, it wouldn’t be all that much better than the “PiggyPacker” giant forklifts with the spreaders, or a portal/ straddle crane - and perhaps worse, since it is less mobile.

Think of the clerk in a Railway Post Office car who has to sort a bag of letters - which are in random order - for many destinations, standing in front of one of those ‘pigeonhole’ racks. Read the description and see the photo of same at the bottom of this blog webpage (not mine, of course), dated Tuesday, May 12, 2009, under the heading “My First Job with the Feds” at : http://agingracer.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

But how long do you think the sorting operation would take if they had only 1 box to sort into ? Go through the bag, pick out all the letters for Atlanta, leave the rest lay. Send the Atlanta letters on their way, then look for the Boston letters - then the Cincinatti ones, then those for Detroit, Erie . . . Clearly, it would be much faster to have a whole vertical stack - or better yet, many of them - hence the ‘pigeonholes’.

It’s the same with containers, only much larger. The more places that can be accessed by the ‘sorter’ - whether it’s a person or a crane - the faster, more flexible, and more thorough the sorting process goes. I’m sure there’s a mathematical way to quantify and plot all that, but I’m not familiar with it, other than to observe it’s probably close to a ‘squared’ power function, esp. for running the letters or containers through multiple sorts at the facility before re-dispatching them. I believe that people who work in Industrial Engineering, Operations Research, and the like, are the experts in this, such as at FedEx, UPS, the Post Office, etc.

  • Paul North.
16

Question:

how close are the tracks to each other at these locations that have these “super straddlers”?. It may be that more tracks can be placed within a yard? The extra 1 or 2 tracks for receiving / departures may give more flexibility?

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20’ if I recall. That’s what threw me off…I was thinking of what it would take to offload form all the tracks and not seeing any advantage. My brain stuck on offloading entire trains, such as at LA/Long Beach-sorting boxes didn’t register.

18

Kevin’s right - it’s 20’ track center spacing typical. See Slide 72 of the 136 in the PowerPoint presentation that I linked in my Original Post for that dimension and the best depiction of what under each set of cranes. For the big “Overhead Production Cranes”, in order from left to right:

  • 1 “Strip Track”

  • 1 crane rail

  • 5 more “Strip Tracks”

  • 2 “Drive Lanes”

  • 1 crane rail (the other one)

  • “Ground Stacking Area”, shown as 4 containers across x 4 to 5 high

The “Ground Stacking Cranes” overhang the same “Ground Stacking Area” as above, then:

  • 1 crane rail

  • Another “Ground Stacking Area”, shown as 5 containers across x 5 high

  • Another 2 “Drive Lanes”

  • 1 crane rail (the other one)

Beyond that is “Parking Area”, but it’s not underneath any portion of either rype of crane.

Hope this is helpful in understanding how BNSF set up this terminal.

  • Paul North.
19

Victrola1 has posted some comments and links to more recent photos of the BNSF Burlington, Iowa bridge replacement project on another thread here at:

BNSF Burlington IA Mississippi Bridge Constuction

http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/178470/2019498.aspx#2019498

  • Paul North.
20

PDN: Now you can compare that yard to the proposed North Baltimore (on THURSDAY news wire).

Just under the cranes left to right

5 container storage lanes

crane rail

Roadway appears to be 3 +trailers wide

5 container strip tracks

crane rail

3 container strip tracks

To left of crane work area is container storage and to right of cranes are make up tracks and block swaping area. Is this bigger than the BNSF Memphis yard?