The topic was referencing RCLs in respect to burried communications lines.
Oltmand(Don), responded that PennCentral and Conrail had made heavy use of burried Communications Cables, rather than line-side pole lines for power and communications.
He stated he thought that NS was utilizing their portions of that network. Further mentioning that Conrail had operated a Company-owned cable plowthat was mounted on a flat car to burry their RCLs (Remote Cable Lines).
About 12 years ago, in the Atlanta, Ga. area I watched as a train with several flat cars with cable spools mounted to feed a fibre optic cable to a plow mounted on a flat car behind the the loaded cable cars, the plow(s) were mounted on a kind of pantagraph arrangement that allowed them to follow the terrain profile of the ROW being worked. The power appeared to be a couple of geeps (possibly Paducah rebuilds, one had an oxyolk breather assembly) and a caboose. The train was apparently owned by QWEST Corp. as that was the ident. markings. At the time I saw it it was working Atlanta to Macon line, and I saw saw it laying some on another line in the Atlanta west area.
This was a pretty unusual operation, and I’ve never seen any other types of operations reported on or photographed anywhere.
I am wondering how common is the practice of laying these cables on railroad ROWs?
I think when SPRINT was part of the Southern Pacific Corp. they may have done some of it, but don’t know for sure.
Do the railroads that do bury their RCLs own their own equipment, or do they sub contract it out?
Over the years CSX has turned a pretty penny from allowing Sprint and other telecom providers to bury cable along various segments of their right of way. In addition to the telecom carriers paying rights fees to bury the cable, the must also provide a number of channels on the cable for the carriers use. I have no idea of the $$$$ of the contracts nor how many channels are made available to the carrier.
Many (but not all) rail lines in this area - eastern Pennsylvania - have either Fiber Optic Lines or some other kind of communications line buried along them. Locally, the NS ‘Reading Line’ from Allentown to same has an ATT FOL along it, usually on the northern side of the ROW. As Don said, there’s one along the NS line from Altoona to the west, including throiugh the Horse Shoe Curve area. Even the rinky-dink 7-mile Boyertown/ Colebrookdale Branch from the former Reading main in Pottstown, PA had one, if I recall correctly. As best as I can recall, the revenue from that one was fairly minimal - maybe $1,000 to $2,000 per mile per year, or in the $10,000 to $15,000 range annually.
About 10 years ago National Public Radio had a fairly long segment on how the Internet/ FOL lines were following the old railroad ROW’s - even abandoned ones - because they were the best was to seaml
The cable plow looks like it was rebuilt from a Jordan Spreader. In addition to buried cables, it’s not too unusual around here for pipelines to share the right-of-way. Around Dolton Crossing on the IHB, you can see the markers for the cable lines and a couple of pipelines on the IHB right-of-way.
I don’t know that it’s available publicly, but a look at Level 3’s Western United States node map would show that their stops from Chicago to the West coast are quite familiar. Chicago to SF via Omaha, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City? Chicago to LA via St Louis? Chicago to Seattle via the high line?
Level 3 by the way is the largest provider of network backbone services in the US. They own the most fiber optic cable having bought up a number of smaller operators.
Railroads are basically the only option when you need to run something east to west across the country in an unbroken line.
The pictures Paul North provided, look very similar to the equipment that I recall seeing in Georgia. Unfortunately,
I may have gotten some of the details fogged up in the recall.[#oops]
What I found in one of Paul North’s links was a story that Quest Communications had recently merged with another Comm Company, Century Tel from Monroe, La. And the Pictures of the Michaels Corp equipment that Paul North had linked, looked very similar (I guess I misspoke about the OxYolk Air Cleaner on the one engine). [%-)] But without knowing the ‘rest of the story’ my guess is at some point Qwest had sold its cable train off to another cable installer (?).
According to one piece of info Qwest has somewhere around 173,000 miles of lines. And there were several scattered comments that the ablity to lay cable along the rail lines was beneficial to both carriers, as the income was quoted as being something between $1K and $2k per mile per year.
Not a major income resource, but sure would help to pay part of the light bill! Thanks, for the responses!
It should be noted that the stuff on the reels is likely duct - the fiber optic cable will be pulled later. They really don’t like to splice fiber any more than they have to, and that might happen if they hit an obstacle.
Another use for old railroad lines is public utilities - our local development authority laid a water line along the long abandoned line from Cape Vincent to Glen Park (Watertown) - the original mainline of the Rome and Watertown. Apparently the line hadn’t reverted back to original owners, or else they did a lot of negotiating…
"It should be noted that SP Telecom was not the first successful telecommunications spin-off from Southern Pacific. Earlier, the railroad giant had created and sold anoth
New to the site, just stumbled across it this morning. Lot’s of great info here. Thought I would chime in.
We developed our first rail plow in 1987 using a modified Jordan Spreader. Later models we developed have improved on that design.
The use of rail plowing was very common in the late 1980’s and throughout the 1990’s, covering thousands of miles. One of the advantages for the Telco in using RR rights of way is the corridor is far more secure and less impacted by road move activity. Rail plowing virtually came to a halt in late 2001 when the telecom sector crashed. Most of the rail plowing activity was performed by contractors such as Michels. SP (Qwest) built their own plows in about 1999 or 2000. Michels purchased that fleet from Qwest in 2004.
Our current plows are capable of plowing 15 feet from the center of the tracks at depths up to 60 inches. Plows are mounted on both sides of the carriage. More robust, heavier plows are used for pre-ripping rocky areas. If the rock cannot be pre-ripped, we use high rail excavators equipped with rock hammers. The reels you see in the photo’s are HDPE duct, typically ranging from 1-1/4" to 2" diameter. We have plowed up to 26 duct at a time, but quantities of 1 to 8 are far more common. After the duct is installed, the cable is blown into the duct.
Qwest probably put their name on that cable laying train for advertising, but it almost certainly was owned by a contractor like Michels/Henkels & McCoy/etc. However,I do know that at one time SP owned a construction subsidiary (Southern Pacific Construction Services) that operated at least one cable plow train. I recall seeing a photo (years back in Extra 2200 South,IIRC) of a GP-9 lettered for the subsidiary that was power for the plow train. That may well have been back when they still owned SPRINT…
I’ve seen it claimed that the owners of Guilford transportation(Now Pan Americ
I always found SPrint’s commercials about being the “only completely fiberoptic network” amusing. They were the only complete network because they were brand new and already owned the right of way. AT&T on the other hand had perfectly serviceable Microwave towers and the like.
First - [#welcome] to the site, Jerrod. Hope you find it interesting - there’s quite a diverse and informed bunch here, as you’ve seen. Your information is also appreciated.
Second - so here’s question for you, that occurred to me - a track MOW and ROW guy, who’d normally skeptical of anything within about 15 feet of a track because of the potential for future complications - over lunch:
How do you handle/ what do you do when the plowing operation encounters a diverging track ? By that, I don’t mean a passing siding or parallel track, but instead a track that goes way beyond the 15 feet from the track you’re on, such as a true branch line or an industrial spur into a factory or plant, etc.
Welcome Jerrod. Interesting insight. I’ve seen your facility near Byron Hill a couple of times and wondered “What the heck do they do?” and this thread just answered that.
Roughly what does it cost per mile to have lines buried by your crews? Thanks in advance.
Your assumptions are correct. When the plow comes to an intersecting track, road crossing, intersecting signal wires, etc the plow is pulled out of the ground. Most of these areas are then directional bored. In the case of a track crossing, these are bored at a depth of 10’ below the tracks and sleeved with an HDPE or steel casing large enough to accomodate the smaller ducts. The “tie-ins” are completed using duct couplers.
Junction boxes (handholes) are typically placed below grade at intervals of 2,500 to 5,000 feet. These serve as assist points for the cable installation, slack storage boxes, and storage for splice points. The fiber optic cable reels are typically 15,000 to 20,000 feet in length.
Bridge attachments are commonly used. These are typically a galvanized steel “A” bracket that is welded, bolted, or mechanically connected to the bridge. Bullet resistant fiberglass or steel pipe is placed in those brackets and the ducts pulled through those pipes. If sufficient clearance is available, this method is sometimes used in tunnels as well.
Derailments do occasionally affect these lines. I haven’t seen any studies on the frequency of outages on RR right of way (row) vs public row but would have to guess that damages are far more frequent on public row based solely on greater exposure within public row. We assisted a carrier on a derailment outage several years ago. The area had gotten 14" of rain in a 24 hour period. A large culvert under the tracks had gotten clogged with debris, causing the water to seep around the culvert, eventually the whole culvert washed out, leaving the tracks suspended with nothing under them. A single locomotive with about 6 cars came through at about 1:00 am, all of which derailed. The engine took out the fiber optic line, which was buried about 4 feet deep. A temporary cable wa
Thanks for jumping in here. This is pretty interesting stuff.
My recollection of the cable aying train went back some years, and I was wondering how long has Michaels Corp been doing this type of installation?
And I’m really curious about the train itself. Do you still operate the locomotives, and have you any ideas aas to their pedigrees?
Were the two ever part of the Qwest Operation?
Did Michael’s purchase them to use specifically on your operation from a railroad, or someone else?
I’d guess the technology is pretty much an industry standard, although one company might have a really good idea, and their build might have propriatery aspects, but overall resemble industry practices. I’d guess in the latter aspect if utilizing a host railroad some familiarity with the gear woulf be a real help while operating.
We’ve been in the utility construction business since 1959. Built our first railplow in 1987. The locomotives were acquired in the mid to late 90’s (I think they may have come from SP but don’t recall for sure) and sold about 2005. For most of the installations we have completed, the RR furnishes the locomotive and it’s crew. The railplows themselves are always operated by our personnel. It’s very important to have an experienced crew with this type of installation.
Qwest’s plows were originally built for SP Construction (a division of SP Telecom) which went on to purchase Qwest as referenced by others in previous posts. In 2004 Michels purchased 28 cars from Qwest, including four railplows, one of which has been retired due to it’s age (UMLER). We currently have 5 railplows in our fleet. The link that Paul North provided showing the railplow in Horicon (MPCX-5003) was originally an SP or Qwest railplow (SPCX-5003). These are extremely heavy duty units. One of the units we have (MPCX-5002) is built on a locomotive chassis. Very durable in tough soil conditions.