WASHINGTON — Amtrak has told federal regulators that it wants to find a way to resolve a complaint from freight customers who will lose access to Norfolk Southern service for several weeks during trackwork on the Philadelphia-Harrisburg main line.
Amtrak plans to shut one track to all traffic starting this month, which would prevent NS from serving some local shippers on the line via its trackage rights. Wenger and Esbenshade, which produce animal feed for distribution throughout the Northeast, would lose service to their feed mills in Mount Joy, Pa., for the duration of the project, the companies told the Surface Transportation Board in a complaint filed last week.
The NS customers sought an injunction to halt the trackwork as well as a directed service order that would keep freight cars moving.
Norfolk Southern said it wants to maintain the status quo and pursue board-sponsored mediation.
“NSR strongly supports working collaboratively to find a superior way to permit Amtrak to complete its track project while minimizing the harm to local freight customers. NSR is confident that time and open communications — facilitated by the Board — will allow the parties to strike a better balance moving forward,” NS told the board in a May 1 filing. “As such, NSR supports maintaining the status quo to allow the parties time to explore reasonable alternatives and to engage in Board-sponsored Mediation.”
Amtrak said its lawyers were scheduled to meet with the freight customers’ lawyers today. In its May 1 filing, Amtrak said the freight customers had not met the legal standard for an injunction and directed service order. In addition, Amtrak argues that the STB lacks jurisdiction over its routes and services.
The passenger railroad told the board that there was no reasonable alternative to shutting down one track while work is under way. “The magnitude and complexity of this project mean that the project cannot be performed in an efficient and commercially reasonable manner without disrupting access to sidings that service rail shippers on the Subject Line, including Petitioners,” Amtrak said.
The $167 million project covers 14.8 miles of track and involves installation of 37,400 concrete ties and 149,600 feet of rail. Some 74,800 feet of track will be undercut, while 261,800 feet of track will be resurfaced.
NS had sought to reduce the outages on Track 1 to several 10-day increments, rather than a blanket 45-day outage that would eliminate access to customer spurs.
“Amtrak has carefully evaluated other ways to structure the track replacement work, but has not identified an alternative that results in no impact to Petitioners,” Amtrak told the STB. “The main alternative that Amtrak evaluated at the request of NS would cost up to $30 million more in taxpayer dollars and would also have cascading effects for planned rehabilitation projects that Amtrak has determined through careful study are necessary to ensure the continued safety, reliability, and quality of its infrastructure.”
Delaying the project, Amtrak said, would mean idling a 120-person trackwork crew, pushing the maintenance project into next year, and delaying other projects scheduled to use the passenger railroad’s only track laying machine.
Amtrak said it first notified NS about the track work project and its impact in September 2022.
I believe Amtrak plans to use the Track Laying Machine (TLM) which is a huge machine capable of replacing all the ties and the rail as it works along the road. Set up is time-consuming and expensive. I’m sure the plan is to replace all the wood ties with concrete and install all-new rail. Switch timbers will remain wood.
TLM is not your grandfather’s tamper. Between the two halves of TLM there’s no railroad.
Leaman Place (Paradise) is East of the work zone. TLM went through there a couple of years ago. In fact, there’s a set of powered and signalled crossovers there now instead of the previous hand-thrown single crossover with signalled locks.
I’m sure Amtrak and the feed mills will come up with a solution.
Transload somewhere nearby if possible. But in the long term transload would probably be cost prohibitive if volume was huge. Let alone the amount of added truck traffic on local highways. On the other hand did Amtrak even look at bringing in a contractor or leasing additional equipment to speed things up a bit ? Amtrak has only one track laying machine ?
If they are only down one track at a time there appear to be several spurs from the other track near at least one of the mills if they are available and a transload could be arranged.
So Amtrak goes crying to the STB when they can’t get to Mobile…but now that the shoe is on the other foot, the STB “lacks jurisdiction” over Amtrak? Excuse me???
Transload at Paradise at SRR and truck it for the interim? Or are they even affected.
Find a transload operation anywhere and go that route…I’m sure someone could come up with enough bulk OTR for the duration of the outage…and the customers might actually like the service better…which is one reason why I think NS wants to keep the rail line open…because if transload works out to be better than all rail, the customers just might switch.