They keep the freight moving

By Alberta Stojkovic -

30 CSX rail­road work­ers will be a pres­ence in Mor­row County for two weeks as they repair the tracks, replace 8,500 ties and resur­face the track area.

Crew Super­vi­sor, Dave Duso said that this sec­tion has been pri­or­i­tized for repair. The crew is one of 22 teams that travel around the coun­try east of the Mis­sis­sippi to keep the trains mov­ing on safe tracks. The com­pany and crew is based in Jack­sonville, Florida, but the men are from all over the United States.

Dwayne Com­modore said the crew is now work­ing up by the Iberia area. They keep their equip­ment on the tracks in Edi­son since there is a sec­ond track there. They wait until the sched­uled trains have gone by and then travel up the tracks to the area where they’re work­ing. He said they were work­ing near Tittle’s Scrap yard that day and would get on their machines to go up the eight miles to Iberia when the all clear per­mis­sion comes.

Super­vi­sor Duso said the tracks are a Class 4 track for freight trains only. There are some rails that are Class 6 and are kept in really good — like new con­di­tion so that pas­sen­ger trains can go on them at high speeds. The pas­sen­ger trains can move at higher ele­va­tions of track with a greater curve of 6 degrees rather than the 4 degrees of the freight trains.

Duso said that they can also speed up the freight trains with the retied tracks. They will be installing motion detec­tors along the tracks in some places so lights and gates at the cross­ings work earlier.

Crew mem­bers Com­modore and Frank Davis took pride in point­ing out the machines they oper­ate every day as they waited for the all clear to work.

“It’s the rail­road” Davis said with a laugh, “We hurry up and wait!”

The crew will be work­ing in Cleve­land next. Sum­mers are for work in the north­ern states and they work on the tracks in the south in the winter.

Duso said the cost of the repairs and upkeep is cov­ered by the CSX com­pany. Gov­ern­ment funds are not used for most freight com­pa­nies. The U.S. Gov­ern­ment owns Am Trak and gov­ern­ments grants are used to sub­si­dize them since the pas­sen­ger trains aren’t as prof­itable as freight trains.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Aug 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.