More and more often I see derailment cleanups performed by RJ Corman, even for the big class ones.
It surprises me that someone like NS or CSX would prefer to contract work out that it could perform for itself. How did RJ Corman manage to earn this reliance from the big boys?
R.J. Corman is one of several contract clean-up companies, another big one is Hulcher Services. They earned their trust by doing good work at good prices, just like any successful vendor.
Large derailments are infrequent occurences and it is much less expensive for railroads to contract for cleanup rather than maintain the staff and equipment in house which most of the time would be sitting around being unproductive. Labor agreements are one of those cost factors.
Derailment frequency has declined so much in the last 20 years that the contract cleanup companies have had to expand into other lines of business to keep the lights on and the mouths fed.
RWM
What other things do they do?
…clean up in aisle seven…[:P]
Corman, IIRC, also leases locomotives.
Why yes! The big player at Hulcher is environmental cleanup (spills of all kinds), and flood and mudslide cleanup, plus track construction support, and miscellaneous railroad lifts of all kinds. The tools and skills are much the same. http://www.hulcher.com
R.J. Corman is much broader as it’s also a major short line and contract switching operator.
An up-and-comer in the Pacific Northwest is Rick Franklin Corporation, which has somewhere around 125 pieces of equipment working 7/24 on the big Cascade Summit slide on UP. http://www.rfc-nw.com
RWM
In Ky. on ex L&N rails R.J. Corman runs a dinner train on the old Bardstown branch, which serves several breweries, and has purchased a Chinese QJ class 2-10-2 with plans to operate it on the old Eastern Kentucky line from Louisville to Lexington.
Dale
Doesn’t Morrison-Kneudsen do some rail construction contract work?
Not lately. Morrison-Knudsen went bankrupt in 1995. Its assets were acquired by Washington Group in 1996. Washington Group was acquired by URS in 2007.
M-K was a well-regarded small earthmoving contractor formed in 1912, bidding on larger and larger projects including some significant relocations for the Oregon Short Line (a UP component) in the teens. Railway construction work declined to nil after the late 1920s and M-K began bidding on dams such as the Boulder (Hoover) Dam, where it was one of the Six Companies along with Kaiser, Utah, Bechtel, Shea, Pacific Bridge, and MacDonald & Kahn (yes, that’s seven but they liked the name “Six” so it stuck.) The big western railway contractor of the 20th Century was Wattis Brothers, which reorganized as Utah Construction around 1900, and built the WP, among other major contracts.
I don’t recall Washington Group being a major player in Class I railroad construction at any time recently – the major players there are Kiewit, Granite, Ames, Herzog, Flatirons, Stacy & Witbeck, and Railworks – but it and URS are big in transit construction.
RWM
RJ corman also operates the former nickel plate trackage from lima ohio to portland indiana with the branch from st marys to minster ohio too.
stay safe
joe
Back in the day the railroads did do their own wrecking, hence the “big hook” and other equipment. But they had the manpower (section gangs and shop forces) spread all over the railroad to do that work. Today that ready reserve of manpower does not exist.
Makes perfect sense, thank you. I guess I just had the notion that the majors all had their own inhouse track gangs, which would be dispatched to any wreck repairs “on call”
Prolly much cheaper to contract than to have an inhouse crew pull up stakes from a job in progress, travel 2000 miles for a day of work, and then go back to resume their scheduled assignment. Especially if you factor the delays to the normal work that must be postponed in order to service the emergency.
Thanks, …
(off topic) How can I get one of those pictures some of you have under your names?
Having had the opportunity to work several major derailments over the years, both with the Carriers own Wreck Train and with contracted off track equipment.
With the Wreck Train and it’s crane, it took 15 minutes for multiple men to set up blocking for the crane to make a lift. Next move after the lift would need to have the crane repositioned, so the blocking had to be knocked down and then reset in the cranes new position…and so on and so on. A very drawn out and tedious procedure. In addition to the Crane operator and the 5 to 10 carmen that were a part of the working Wreck Crew you also had the Wreck Train traincrew. With the crane being track mounted there were limited points available to attack the general pile up of the wreck and generally a large derailment required the use of two Wreck trains and their cranes…one on each end of the derailment.
With Contracted Off track equipment the contractor arrives on the deraiment site, generally withn 4 to 6 hours from the time they were notified that they were needed. The minimum contractor response is normally 2 Cat D-9 sized dozers with an A arm mounted to the side of the equipment that is rigged as a small crane and can lift cars and engines. Some of the dozers will retain their dozer blade. For large derailment multiple contractor units are generally used and there can be as many as 10 A Frame equipped D-9 working the site. Generall 2 dozers will hook up to a derailed car and lift/drag the car out of the right of way. If the car is rerailable, the dozers will lift and rerail the car in concert with railroad carmen. If the cars are not rerailable they are moved clear of the track route. The contractors prime aim is to open up the track route through the derailment site, prepare a rough roadbed for paneled track to be laid down. Once the track route is cleared and the panel track laid the
This seems to be one area where Canadian railways have not followed the American railroads. CN and CP both have a number of large cranes, and a few wreck dozers, spread across their networks.