In the feasibility study Amtrak released about restoring rail service between Chicago and Quad Cities IL, using one of their routes they’d have to build a connector track between the BNSF and IAIS near Wyanet, IL.
The price: $5.6 Million!
For a single connector track? Seriously!
I know that you have to clear the land and grade it, but seriously, that number seems absolutely ridiculous!
Does Amtrak already own the .6 miles of land on which this line is to be built? Amtrak would also have to hire a contractor to provide crews and machinery for this little project. If it costs me $35/day to rent a small electric air compressor from Home Depot, think about the cost of renting all that equipment to grade the roadbed and lay the track. Now pay, house, and feed the guys that know how to operate it. $5.6 Million doesn’t seem so ridicules anymore does it.
I’m guessing that Amtrak wouldn’t be doing the construction though - it will probably be BSNF or IAIS, and they already have all the equipment, and as far as land, illinois farmland in the middle of nowhere is pretty cheap. It still seems like too much to me…
You are doing a LOT of guessing, speculating and assuming. That is always dangerous. I could easily see the project costing $5.6Million or even more. Of course, having visited the site of the proposed connection via IAIS business/inspection train in July 2009 and being a railroad official with budget authority I may sometimes actually know what I’m talking about (as do some of the respondents above). If you had visited the site you would know that near the connection one line (BNSF) passes over the other (IAIS) at an overpass. The overpass is not shown in your innaccurate drawing nor is the significant grade that will be involved in the new connection. This grade separation adds significantly to the cost requiring a lot of heavy earthmoving and perhaps trucking in of needed fill to construct the subgrade which does not now exist.
A recent connecting track project which is considerably smaller than this one is projected to cost approximately $500 per track foot which equates to approximately $2.5Million per mile including the costs of environmental and planning studies. There is no grade separation involved. We also don’t have to comply with PTC or any of the other passenger train requirements including signaling distant signals and electric locking track switches in our situation which also impact costs and the earthwork we need is minimal.
On a per track foot basis connecting track is more expensive than building a straight main track given that connecting tracks are often located at odd locations requiring specialized track work and/or grading and related grade separation work, crossings and/or b
If I remember that study correctly, there was also the requirement for an additional crossover to the east on the existing BNSF trackage and the associated signaling.
Six tenths of a mile would mean an actual 1.2 miles of steel rail which would be 2112 yards at, say, 141 pounds per yard. That’s 149 or so tons at $900? a ton as quoted in a Trains mag last year. That would be $134,000 or so for rail. I wish I could remember how much ties are. But $5.6 million does seem like a lot of money to refresh a ROW that is already there. Especially when the work is being done in a tanking economy and people with such equipment are really needing to put it to work. Didn’t I read in the electrification issue of Trains recently, the Pennsylvania RR got its work done at a pittance during the Depression?
If you were to use convict labor that wouldn’t decrease the cost of construction one cent. It would simply mean that BNSF employees (If they indeed are the ones who should rightly do the work) would put in time claims because the work they should have done was contracted out. There is absolutely no way the MoW employees would lose on that claim.
In all likelyhood the grade work would all be contracted out because Amtrak or BNSF or whomever is not capable of doing that work. It could be that all the grade and track work will be contracted out. I would imagine that if the track work were to be contracted out that time claim by MoW would occur. This isn’t my employer so I can’t predict how the work will be done, but I can assure you that convict labor would fly like a lead balloon.
$100 to $110 as the installed cost per new, preservative-treated, wooden tie sounds about right.
And (assuming double main tracks) let’s figure that the installation will include C.T.C. controlled signals (probably five) and dual-control switches (a minimum of three) on the BNSF side. At the very least IAIS will require least three controlled signals and one dual control switch on their side. Next figure in the modifications that would have to be made to both the BNSF’s and IAIS’s existing signal systems to accomodate this connecting track, and the signaling costs alone could account for nearly half the cost of the project.
Now when you take in the cost of signaling I can wrap my head around $5.6 million… that’s why I started this thread in the first place, because I never thought of signaling and just the actual physical construction of the connector and $5.6 mil seemed ridiculous for just a bit of physical construction…
There is no right-of-way there to reuse. Or an embankment. Curious why you state there is one.
Perhaps tomorrow morning the price of labor, machine rental, and materials will be priced aggressively. What about two years from now after the engineering is completed, right-of-way acquired, permitting completed, and you are ready to let contracts? Do you think it will still be the same price as tomorrow?
Why is everyone assuming track length? Anyone engineered it?
You apparently have a price in mind you think is reasonable? Could you explain how you arrived at it?
RWM
Will there be any RR crossings in this new section of track? South of town they added arms and flashing lights at an existing crossing. It cost about $450,000.
