GLENCOE, Minn. — The Twin Cities & Western Railroad is continuing its rail joint elimination program thanks to a recent federal grant.
Crews from contractor ONE Rail Group are currently working near Plato, Minn.
The contractors cut off bolted rail ends, then push the pieces of rail together. Using a ONE Rail truck equipped with a.c. welding technology, the rails are flash-butt welded together in about 3 minutes.
Workers then move in to smooth the rail and rail head. Rail anchors are then placed, and when the section of track is complete, a surfacing crew will tamp blast through the welded rail section.
About every 10 rails, new rail is added to replace lost footage of the bolt-hole ends. Crews work on the north or south side of the rail for a few miles, then drop back and weld the parallel rail.
Last week the crew worked adjacent to the residence of Allan Debner, who has lived trackside for more than 70 years. He remembers when the Milwaukee Road upgraded the rail in 1959-60, and when the Olympian Hiawatha used to cruise by at around 70 mph.
When Debner was young, his family’s cows would have to be moved across the tracks; he recalls hearing a train whistling for town as the cows were still on the tracks. “But they made it across in time,” he said. Debner still has a piece of 95-pound rail Milwaukee crews gave him when the rail was replaced.
A bipartisan effort by U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, along with Reps. Dean Phillips, Ilhan Omar, Michelle Fischbach, and Tom Emmer, assisted in obtaining the grant.
The project was awarded funding by the U.S. Department of Transportation under the Federal Railroad Administration’s Consolidated Rail Infrastructure & Safety Improvement (CRISI) program, supporting the railroad’s long-term program to eliminate all jointed rail on its main line. Twin Cities & Western had previously received a $2.01 million CRISI grant in 2019. That money was used to weld rails together on a segment of the main line between Chanhassen and Norwood Young America, Minn.
