WASHINGTON (AP) __

Machine helping with high-speed rail transition

By Mary Ann Ford | mford@pantagraph.com | Posted: Sunday, May 1, 2011 7:00 am

A one-of-a-kind machine that lays the new high-speed rail line from St. Louis to Dwight at a pace of 30 feet per minute is expected to roll into the Twin Cities by mid-May.

In one motion, the half-mile long Track Renewal Train (TRT) removes the old rail and wooden ties and replaces them with new rail and concrete ties.

“Crews used to do 200 to 300 ties a day in the ’80s; now we can do 5,000 a day with this machine,” said Jason Meisheimer, command center supervisor for the Union Pacific Railroad track renewal group.

That pace is a key for the rail corridor because it is used by Amtrak trains 10 times a day.

“The TRT is used in high volume rail traffic areas when closing time is time sensitive,” said Mark Davis, director of corporate relations and media for the Northern Region of Union Pacific Railroad.

Portions of the track are closed to rail traffic during construction. Currently, Amtrak’s Lincoln Service trains travel the rail from Chicago to Normal where passengers board buses for the rest of their journey south, said Marc Magliari, Amtrak’s media relations manager.

Buses also bring passengers from the south to Normal to pick up northbound Lincoln Service trains to Chicago. The Texas Eagle train operates non-stop but uses an alternate route between Chicago and St. Louis.

When the track work shifts from south to north, Magliari said Amtrak will announce revised plans.

Davis said the rail work should be completed to the end of the line in Dwight in late July.

The new rail , part of a $1.1 billion Federal Railroad Administration-funded upgrade on the Dwight to St. Louis corridor, will allow Amtrak trains to travel up to 110 mph — 31 mph faster than the average current speed.

How it works

Union Pacific, which owns the 208 miles of track between Joliet and Godfrey, is leasing the TRT from the manufacturer, HARSCO Rail of South Carolina, and has been using it on track renewal projects throughout the United States since 2005, said Davis. The TRT doesn’t work alone.

There are locomotives and support cars ahead of it and 30 or so rail cars behind it, stretching about 8 miles, said Davis.

There also is a crew of 235 workers.

The process starts with the prep crew laying out materials in advance of the TRT. A welding machine welds together quarter-mile lengths of rail to form one continuous rail that is placed in the middle of the train bed. 

At the head of the TRT machinery system are flatbed rail cars with four or five layers of new concrete ties.

The ties are transported to the TRT through a series of three gantry cranes that move across the rail cars with new and old ties. The first gantry takes a load of new concrete ties from the flat car to a second gantry.  The second gantry takes the ties while transferring a load of old wooden ties to the first gantry (which takes the old ties back to the flat car).

The second gantry takes the new ties to the third gantry that works closest to the TRT.

The process is very quick — the third gantry completes its roundtrip in 90 seconds — to keep pace with the TRT, Meisheimer said.

Meanwhile, the TRT is busy doing several other things: it takes out the old iron railroad spikes and anchors, picks up the old ties, and puts down the new concrete ties and anchors — all while moving the old rail to the side and putting the new rail in place.

The machine also makes sure the ties are 24 inches apart and levels the track bed by removing the old ballast (the crushed rock in the track bed).

“A computer counts and spaces the ties,” Meisheimer said. “The TRT can do 15 ties a minute.”

A crew follows the machine to make sure everything meets standards. Workers mark broken clips or crooked ties with bright green paint so they can be fixed by crews that follow along.

Fresh ballast also is brought in so the track bed has good drainage.

Other rail cars in the procession do cleanup: one has huge magnet that picks up all the discarded anchors and spikes; another picks up the old rail.

Meisheimer said the old rail is used as railyard track or is re-fabricated.  The old ties go to a Tucson, Ariz., company where some of it is recycled into such things as landscape timber.

High-speed rail upgrades intact in budget plan

Kurt Erickson|Tuesday, April 12, 2011 5:12 pm

SPRINGFIELD -- Although the federal budget deal is expected to reduce future funding for some high-speed rail projects across the nation, work on the stretch between Chicago and St. Louis remains on track.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said Tuesday the agreement will ensure Illinois has money to keep the rail work going, as well as complete a total of eight transportation projects worth about $400 million.

"This is good news for several communities in Illinois that have planned and secured millions in private investment in anticipation of this funding," Durbin said in a statement.

Funding for a number of rail initiatives was in doubt in February when congressional negotiators floated a plan to cut funding to one of President Obama's highest profile transportation initiatives.

The deal that began unfolding last week as the clock ticked down on a potential federal government shutdown allows many projects already under way to be funded. But the pool of money available for additional projects has shrunk.

The Chicago-St. Louis upgrades will affect riders on the route that runs through Dwight, Pontiac, Normal and Lincoln.

In addition to keeping the St. Louis-Chicago line intact, the budget deal allows for continued planning of a passenger line between Chicago and the Quad Cities.

Hoping Florida's loss will be their gain, Illinois and neighboring states have applied for some of the $2.43 billion in federal high-speed rail funding that became available after Florida Gov. Rick Scott scuttled plans for fast trains.

That puts them in direct competition with California, which has set its sights on the same funds. The federal government recently announced that states could apply for the high-speed and intercity passenger rail funding that Florida returned.

"California's application seeks funding for projects that will be the building blocks for a statewide network of rail lines linking high-speed and intercity rail lines to regional rail lines," California Gov. Jerry Brown said in a recent letter introducing the state's application. "The projects will provide the foundation for a transportation system that will improve mobility, help the environment, reduce energy dependency and put Californians to work."

The money would enable California to extend an initial Central Valley leg of the proposed 800-mile system. California already has received some of the largest federal grants in the nation under the Obama administration's push to develop a bullet train network similar to those in Europe and the Far East.

Work is slated to begin next year on a $5.5-billion section of rail, viaducts and stations from Fresno to the outskirts of Bakersfield.

If the Midwestern states obtain some of the $2.4 billion that Florida relinquished, the money will be used to buy new trains, accelerate plans to build track and signals for 110-mph passenger service and install railroad crossing upgrades on the Amtrak route between Chicago and St. Louis on the Union Pacific Railroad line, officials said.

A joint application totaling $806.8 million for new trains was submitted by Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin. Illinois would receive $262.8 million, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.

This year, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker canceled plans to extend Amtrak service from Milwaukee to Madison, resulting in the forfeiture of an $800-million grant for high-speed rail from the Federal Railroad Administration. But Walker now says he wants to compete for funding to improve service on the existing Amtrak Hiawatha route between Chicago and Milwaukee.

Illinois, meanwhile, is seeking $186.4 million in federal funds for additional track, rail sidings, signaling and crossing upgrades on the Chicago-to-St. Louis route and $800,000 in federal funds to conduct planning for a station in East St. Louis.

Competition for the federal money is fierce among 24 states, the District of Columbia and Amtrak, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. Grants will be awarded to projects that can deliver benefits quickly, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said.

Hilkevitch writes for the Chicago Tribune.

 

LINCOLN —

Less than four months after losing nearly all of an $810 million grant, Wisconsin is again seeking federal high-speed rail money - this time to upgrade the existing Milwaukee-to-Chicago passenger line.

Gov. Scott Walker's administration announced Tuesday that the state will seek at least $150 million to add equipment and facilities for Amtrak's Hiawatha line.

Walker said the money would be used to upgrade service on the Hiawatha line, as a step toward increasing the speed of the trains to nearly 110 mph and reducing the trip time from 90 minutes to one hour. If the improved service draws more riders, the number of round trips could be increased, he said during a news conference in the Milwaukee Intermodal Station.

The governor said he expected Illinois, Michigan and Missouri would join in the application for the federal dollars, part of the $8 billion rail element of President Barack Obama's administration's stimulus package.

In a bizarre twist, some of the money that Walker now seeks originally was allocated for the Milwaukee-to-Madison route he previously turned down. That money is available because a fellow Republican governor rejected it as well.

Walker said the money would allow Wisconsin to buy two more train sets and eight locomotives and to build a maintenance facility for that equipment and two train sets now under construction.

But speeding up the trains would require additional track improvements in future years, said Reggie Newson, executive assistant to state Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb.

The locomotives, train sets and maintenance base would have been covered by the earlier $810 million grant. But the maintenance base, originally envisioned as a $52 million facility in Madison, now would be a $60 million facility at the Talgo Inc. train plant in the Century City complex on Milwaukee's north side.

Walker administration officials said the state's contract with Talgo, signed by former Gov. Jim Doyle's administration, committed the state to spending at least $30 million on a maintenance base, regardless of whether it had federal funding. This grant application would seek $40 million to $50 million in federal funds for that project, matched by $10 million to $12 million in state funds, which the Walker administration calls a $20 million saving for state taxpayers.

Talgo is building two trains for the Hiawatha, and the state had an option for two more if the service was extended to Madison. When the Milwaukee-to-Madison line was canceled, Talgo said it would turn its factory into a maintenance base after fulfilling its current orders from Wisconsin and Oregon.

The state plans to seek bids for train sets instead of exercising its option for more trains from Talgo, Newson said. The state would also seek bids for locomotives, which are not built at Talgo's Milwaukee plant.

Asked about the apparent reversal in his position on rail initiatives, Walker said he always had supported improvements to the Hiawatha. It's a popular and established service, without the local opposition that complicated the Milwaukee-to-Madison link he campaigned against.

"This is not inconsistent with the position I took in the past," he said.

Milwaukee Ald. Robert Bauman called the governor's pursuit of federal stimulus money for the Hiawatha "rank hypocrisy."

Walker criticized federal stimulus spending during his campaign and rejected federal money that could have been used for the maintenance building on the city's north side. The state will pay more for that facility than if it had accepted the initial $810 million, Bauman said.

The Hiawatha provides the Midwest's most frequent and heavily used Amtrak service. It's one of the top 10 routes nationwide, nearly doubling ridership in the past eight years, to a record 792,848 last year. Ridership has continued to rise, notching gains of almost 8% each in January and February, on a pace to exceed 850,000 this year.

A study by America 2050, a national coalition of urban planners, found a Milwaukee-to-Chicago high-speed rail route would have the greatest ridership potential in the Midwest and would rank in the top 1% of 7,870 possible routes nationwide, based on population, employment and connections to urban rail transit.

Local business and government leaders strongly support the Hiawatha, which they see as a vital link to Chicago's regional economy. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce had urged Walker to seek the money.

"The continued growth of this line will only strengthen our state as people and dollars continue to flow between the Milwaukee and Chicago metropolitan areas," Barrett wrote in a March 18 letter to the governor and Gottlieb. "Milwaukee's business community recognizes this fact and has been a proponent of continued investment in this line."

On Tuesday, Barrett hailed Walker's announcement, and said he would urge the federal government to approve the application. He said the maintenance base at the Talgo plant would help keep jobs in Milwaukee.

Walker campaigned against plans to extend the Hiawatha to Madison with a new 110-mph leg. The federal government had awarded the state $810 million in stimulus money to cover the full construction cost of the route, as part of a larger plan for high-speed service from Chicago to the Twin Cities and throughout the Midwest.

But Walker and his fellow Republicans objected to state taxpayers picking up the line's operating costs, initially projected at $7.5 million a year. Revised ridership estimates could have cut $2.8 million off the state share, however, and the state could have used existing federal aid to cover up to 90% of its costs.

After Walker defeated Barrett, the Democratic candidate and high-speed rail supporter, in the Nov. 2 gubernatorial election, the federal government pulled all but $2 million of the $810 million grant and distributed that money to other states, along with $400 million that Ohio's newly elected Republican Gov. John Kasich had rejected for a 79-mph line linking his state's three largest cities.

Although he was seen as a passenger rail foe, Walker has said he supports keeping the Hiawatha running and would have been open to using the $810 million to improve existing rail service.

Before the federal government withdrew most of its money, the MMAC offered Walker a plan to use at least some of the money on various rail projects without building the Milwaukee-to-Madison line. The plan included renovating the train shed and buying three new locomotives and a new set of passenger cars to supplement the two train sets already ordered from Talgo.

After the state lost the initial grant, MMAC President Tim Sheehy said he hoped his group's plan could be the basis of a new application for federal funds.

That opportunity arose when Florida Gov. Rick Scott, another newly elected Republican, canceled a planned Tampa-to-Orlando high-speed rail line and rejected $2.4 billion in federal money - including $342 million redistributed from the Wisconsin and Ohio projects.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has set an April 4 deadline for states to apply for a share of the money Florida spurned. Federal officials have no timeline for announcing when the money will be handed out, a department spokeswoman said.

The original $810 million grant would have included almost $20 million to renovate the train shed at the downtown Milwaukee Amtrak-Greyhound station, mainly to comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. The state now plans to fund that project partly with the $2 million remaining from the larger grant, plus another $8 million in separate federal funding and to seek legislative permission to use about $10 million in previously authorized state passenger rail borrowing power, Newson said.

Wisconsin received another $12 million in stimulus money for improving the Hiawatha tracks and the passenger platform at the Mitchell International Airport station. That money was not jeopardized by the controversy over the Milwaukee-to-Madison line.

PEORIA-

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin are announcing a high-speed rail agreement they say will create more than 6,000 jobs.

The announcement was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon at an Amtrak rail yard and was expected to include officials from the Federal Railroad Administration and Union Pacific Railroad.

High-speed rail in Illinois has been a priority for Quinn.

In December, federal, state and railroad officials signed an agreement that moved Illinois closer to having high-speed passenger service between Chicago and St. Louis.

Chicago —The next phase of construction on a high-speed rail route between Chicago and St. Louis will begin next month, a high-stakes transportation project that could create more than 6,000 jobs, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin announced Tuesday.

Mary Owen / March 1, 2011

Chicago Tribune - Local

With high-speed rail green-lighted for a portion of the Chicago-St. Louis corridor, IDOT officials on Tuesday held an open house in Joliet seeking input on the impact of expanding high-speed rail.

The Illinois Department of Transportation received $1.1 billion in federal funds to complete a high-speed rail route between Alton and Dwight, two stops on the Amtrak line between Chicago and St. Louis. Now, state officials are in the early stages of trying to complete their original plan – to build a route between the two major cities where trains would travel 110 mph.

“We need to look at all the concerns,” said Michael Garcia, IDOT’s acting bureau chief of high-speed and passing rail.

Public concerns could include a variety things – air pollution, safety and even the impact on the environment.

Tuesday’s meeting was the first of five open houses planned for March. A public meeting will be held Wednesday in Bloomington, Thursday in Springfield, March 8 in Carlinville and March 9 in Alton. Comments can also be submitted online at www.idothsr.org until March 18. An information slide show will be available online in a few days.

A second round of public meetings will be held this summer before IDOT completes its study in late 2012. Last year, the state received $1.25 million in stimulus money to conduct an impact study of the project, which would speed up the travel times and increase frequency of trains between Chicago and St. Louis.

When federal officials reviewed IDOT’s request for funding a St. Louis-Chicago high-speed rail route, they said more research was needed, Garcia said. A direct route between the two major cities – about 284 miles – was estimated to cost more than $3 billion. Right now, the price tag is still unclear.

“We are so far out, we don’t know,” Garcia said.

The expansion plans are at least a few years off, but high-speed rail between Alton and Dwight will be completed by 2014, officials said. Tracks upgrades have been partially completed, but IDOT officials still need to finish upgrades to crossings and signals, purchase trains and improve stations. The route is owned by Union Pacific Railroad and is used for five daily round-trip Amtrak trips between Chicago and St. Louis.

Many Will County officials have embraced high-speed rail, predicting it will be a boon for the area, which is the first major stop outside Chicago. (South suburban Summit is the first stop out of the city.) However, IDOT officials have also proposed four alternative routes to the current Union Pacific Railroad line throughout the south suburbs that could be used for high-speed rail.

The City of Joliet has started a major project that will realign train tracks to alleviate congestion among passenger and freight trains. The city’s multi-modal facility, which was recently granted $32 million in state money, will also create a transportation hub in the city’s downtown which could better accommodate trains, cars, buses and even bikes, city officials said.

Joliet’s project is separate from the high speed-rail, however, “we’ll be a benefactor to all that when it’s completed,” Garcia said.

When IDOT completes its environmental impact study, officials will then complete a design and construction study before seeking funding.

Alicia Hanlon, transportation coordinator for the Will County Center for Economic Development, said the project is so far off that it’s unclear how it will affect the area.

“I think (the benefit) remains to be seen,” Hanlon said.

For information about this month’s public meetings, visit www.idothsr.org/tier_1.