Steeled and preparing for business

$18 million weld facility to produce quarter-mile sections of ribbon rail

 By Reed Fujii

Record Staff Writer

 Posted Oct. 11, 2014 @ 7:00 pm

STOCKTON — On the west end of Rough and Ready Island, mostly hidden by the westernmost row of World War II-era warehouses on the former naval supply base, rises a newly built steel structure.

Like an oversized canopy bed of nails, towers a roofless steel-frame, its trusses spanning more than 200 feet, and its interior studded with rows of I-beams driven deep into the earth. Beyond it is a more modest steel-sided building, but also running hundreds of feet long.

It’s Union Pacific Railroad Co.’s rail welding facility now under construction at the Port of Stockton.

As explained by David Buccolo, general manager of Central California Traction Co. who is helping oversee the project, the canopy is an overhead gantry crane designed to lift bundles of 440-foot-long rail segments. The I-beams are simply racks to hold bundles in stacks. Altogether, it’s a storage facility, able to receive and hold a shipload — 15,000 to 18,000 metric tons — of steel rail at once.

The steel-sided building is where rail segments will be welded into a single “ribbon rail,” 1,440 feet or a quarter-mile long. Eventually the ribbons will be transported and welded into continuous steel rails for Union Pacific new rail installations or replacement projects throughout the West and Midwest.

Continuous rail runs up to eight to 10 miles at a stretch, Buccolo said, and provide maintenance cost savings, and better efficiency and safety than traditional rail.

Earlier railroads were made of nearly 40-foot rail segments tied together with steel bars bolted on to the ends of adjoining rails, the frequent gaps providing “the old clickety-clack” sound as trains rain over them, he said.

“Bolts can come loose, the bars can break,” Buccolo noted.

Central California Traction — a joint venture of Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe — operates a local short-line service on traditional bolted track. He said it requires annual maintenance, with a “bolt machine” going over each rail joint, replacing broken bars and retightening bolts.

Continuous ribbon rail, by comparison, Buccolo said, “It’s much more secure, less maintenance and less chance of a derailment.”

Most recently Union Pacific has produced quarter-mile ribbon rail by importing 80-foot rail sections through Portland, Ore., and shipping them to a facility in Laramie, Wyo., where 18 segments would be welded together.

But in rethinking the process, it was determined that 440-foot rail segments could be produced in Japan.

A customer fabricated ship, the Pacific Spike, will shuttle between Japan and Stockton, carrying bundles of that steel.

Richard Aschieris, director of the Port of Stockton, said the agency was glad to welcome the new welding facility, which he estimated as an $18 million capital investment by the railroad. He also expects it to provide about 25 permanent jobs in addition to the current construction work.

“It’s a real interesting project,” he said. “It includes 17,000 feet of rail, a rail storage yard, a welding and inspection building and a 200-foot-span gantry crane.”

He applauded the railroad’s move to improve its infrastructure.

“It will allow the trains to operate more efficiently,” Aschieris said. “Every time you eliminate a weld then you eliminate a chance for a break.”

Buccolo praised local officials in helping move the project along.

“I’ve got to say the city of Stockton has worked with Union Pacific on the permitting pretty well,” he said. “The city has been very good and, of course, the port has been an excellent partner in this.”

Other project partners, Buccolo noted, include Stockton Steel, which fabricated and erected the rail storage facility and Diede Construction of Lodi.

Buccolo said he expects the first delivery of rail to arrive, perhaps, in early December with rail welding to start in February.

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