RTD is accomplishing its largest overnight rail installation

RTD crews working overnight to expedite rail repairs along Southeast Corridor

It was a summer unlike any other for RTD’s Maintenance of Way (MOW) employees who have been working to replace rail along the Southeast Corridor to restore normal service speeds for customers. The team’s third shift is accomplishingthe largest overnight rail installation undertaking RTD has ever done. As of early September, the team had replaced over 2,500 feet of rail on the Southeast Corridor resulting from inspections identifying rail defects.

“That’s significant in that RTD rail workers typically replace rail 40-80 feet at a time,” said Dennis Hanson, RTD Light Rail Maintenance of Way Manager, who added that MOW crews generally can replace 300-400 feet of 40-80-foot individual pieces of rail comfortably in a single area.

The project started June 4, lasted throughout the summer, and will continue into other sections of rail on the Southeast Corridor and beyond. RTD’s MOW team performs work overnight to enable services on the D, E, H and R light rail lines to continue – even if at slower speeds than normal for limited sections – in consideration of the community and customers who rely on RTD transit services.

Due to the scope of rail replacement and maintenance needed, this project might ordinarily be outsourced to a third-party contractor. Instead, the MOW team jumped in to perform inspections, maintenance and rail replacement. “It was quicker to procure everything ourselves,” said Brian Farris, General Superintendent of Infrastructure.

The work along the Southeast Rail Corridor supports RTD’s Back to Basics initiative to maintain all the agency’s assets in a state of good repair. “Fortunately, we had enough rail in stock that we didn’t need to purchase more rail when we started the project,” Farris said. Since then, RTD has added 10,000 feet of rail to its inventory for ongoing and future installations.

Hanson commended the MOW team for their work on the ongoing project. “They’ve really risen to the occasion. They’ve been able to leverage their knowledge, skills and abilities. What’s impressed me is how they’re able to problem solve and come to a collective agreement on how to mitigate hazards and do the work safely. Everyone is getting the work done and they’re getting home safe, and that’s the most important thing,” Hanson said.

Signal/traction power maintainer Chris White said working the night shift enables the team to make a difference for customers in restoring the rail. “You have to work when the trains don’t run,” he said. “You can’t get out there with the trucks and equipment – that has to be at night when you can make major repairs.”

RTD MOW third-shift employees work during a regular maintenance window from 9:30 p.m. to 6 a.m., with many MOW employees working extended 12-hour shifts, Sunday-Thursday. “That works well because it’d be almost impossible to sustain that level of production seven days a week,” Hanson explained. Maintenance is paused Friday and Saturday for RTD to offer extended service to customers those nights.

The MOW crew comprises a track team, signal traction/power maintainers, track maintainers, track maintainer equipment operators, rail laborers and MOW supervisors, with approximately 75 people, including several contracted workers, to perform grinding to smooth out rail defects. Overnights peak with 22 people performing the work.

“There’s a lot we do in the background to set up one night’s worth of work,” MOW Supervisor Raymond Ferreris explained. Each third shift begins with hauling necessary equipment and materials to the work sites. Before that can happen, MOW employees start with heavy lifting.

“We unload all the trucks of rail that come in and we need to be strategic – it’s a skill to unload rail,” said Farris. “We do small areas of rail replacement normally – this is the most we’ve ever done.”

“We’re moving 80-foot rails that move like spaghetti,” added rail laborer Dantai Cantrell about the challenge in mobilizing rail to sites for repair.

Maintenance Supervisor Evan Martinez said, “You don’t realize how long a (80-foot rail) stick is. I’ve moved a million of them, and it still blows me away when I’m standing next to one.”

Before safely transporting rail to the needed sites, “Crews must power down five or six substations to safely use boom trucks and things that might contact the overhead catenary wire (which powers the light rail cars). We have to lock-out, tag-out and ground it,” Hanson said.

Getting equipment to the worksite involves setting new rail on carts that travel on hy-rail capable vehicles – a slow manual process. MOW crews must also take good care that while the new rail is in transit for installation that “it doesn’t make contact with any other infrastructure in the guideway,” Hanson added. “There are a lot of safety protocols involved that we follow to protect our workers, and they take time. It’s a very long process to get the materials out to where they’re needed.”

“The rail installation is not the hard part,” noted Martinez. “It’s the logistics of getting what we need to the spot where we can install it. If we could magically drop it where we need, we would be done.”

Many MOW team members said the finite period of working overnight is a challenge. “It goes back into planning and making sure that we’re getting what we need in one load as opposed to two loads, so that we don’t have two nights where it seems like you’re doing nothing but you’re doing a huge part of it,” said Martinez.

Hanson added, “In a six- or seven-hour window,there’s a lot of work on the front end and back end that has to be done before we can start pulling clips, pulling rail and replacing it with new. Time is the big constraint.”

When the workday ends, MOW crews remove heavy equipment and materials and take them to their holding areas – and start the process all over again the next day, hauling materials back to the site. “You have to clean up and get the equipment off the rails, making sure everything is ready for service when the rail resumes operations in the morning,” said Hanson.

While the MOW team is acutely aware the slow zones disrupt services for customers, they echo that they are always doing the best they can to make the repairs quickly and safely. “Even though we’re working as fast as possible, safety is number one,” said rail laborer Anthony Paris.

“Shrinking slow zones is chipping away at the mountain, one project and one night at a time, over and over,” added Ferreris.

The team is proud of what they’re accomplishing. Track maintainer Andrew Conley has worked the MOW third shift for 17 years and said, “It’s a satisfying job at night because we can do a lot of the heavy work, replacing rail, welding and operating equipment. It’s more gratifying being able to do the kind of work we do” in restoring the integrity of the rail and service for customers.

As of early September, work on repairing rail on the Southeast Corridor is about 85% complete, and MOW crews will be working to make repairs on other sections of RTD’s system before the weather brings colder temperatures. Rail contracts during cooler weather, making the fall and winter season less conducive for installing new rail.

“They’re shouldering a big responsibility to complete the work,” Farris said. “We do rail work year-round but not at this type of scale.” Hanson agreed that the team is “racing against the clock with the weather.”

Grinding – a technique that can take off thousandths of an inch to smooth the track – is one solution to continuing to perform rail maintenance during cooler months. Farris said that RTD has been performing some profile grinding with a handheld machine and historically used this tool for maintenance in late winter months like February and March. “We’re looking to dramatically increase our grinding efforts,” added Hanson.

Not only have MOW crews made a positive impact for the longer-term investment in rail services, they have also acquired some new skills. “You may have not gotten this on-the-job experience if you were here 10 years ago,” Farris said. “It’s invaluable in that’s how you learn to do rail.”

Project planning throughout remains key to maintaining safety on the job. “All of us have stepped up. This team is really crushing it,” said Martinez. “I’m a track person by trade. I’ve done this forever, and these guys make me better. It’s a team effort.”

Hanson added, “They live safety every day and never let their guard down, and that’s number one.”

The MOW team takes great pride in the work they perform while many in the community are asleep.

Ferreris is one of many on the MOW team who commended the crew for their commitment to the work. “They’re very passionate about what they do and that stands out the most to me. I’m very proud of them.”