These stacks of old rails, along with piles of old ties near the Cheney Rodeo Grounds will soon be gone as crews put finishing touches on roadbed upgrade.
Crews from RailWorks are back on the job putting the finishing touches on their work to upgrade nearly seven-miles of track from Cheney to the Geiger Spur.
The $7 million project that began in September, 2015 included replacement of rails that carry trains from both the Eastern Washington Gateway Railroad and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe and will serve the new Highline Grain Terminal in Four Lakes.
"Currently what's going on is we're cleaning up on the project," Josh Austin, regional manager of the project's contractor said.
The rail will be repurposed for use in the three shortline railroads the state of Washington currently owns, including the Palouse River Coulee City.
The crossties that had been removed and replaced earlier and are piled high along the track are pretty dilapidated Austin said.
"They will be disposed of, per state and federal regulations," he said, adding there are some ties that can be still used in other applications. RailWorks was recently approached by the Jensen Youth Ranch at Medical Lake to be home for some of the ties.
"We're going to try to salvage a few usable ties for them which will be minimal," Austin said. He guessed the ties removed in the renovation project that took place late in 2015 were 1980s - or earlier - vintage.
Some of the really bad ties, the splintered ones, can end up being sent to a disposal site who might grind them into sawdust for use in electrical co-generation facilities such as the one operating at Kettle Falls, Wash.
"We're down to punch list items in the contract," Austin said. Weather issues, including snow in November and December's Arctic temperatures, kept the project from being completed in calendar year 2015.
The project is on schedule, but with a contract that was extended into early 2016 because of Mother Nature. "We're doing all right, we're right on pace," Austin said.
As the piles of ties and stacks of 4,000-pound rail sections slowly shrink, the crews Austin put to work will move to South Dakota, he said.
Austin, however, is staying put in the local office, located in Airway Heights. "I manage what we call the Inland Empire, I guess, he said. Officially it's the Mountain Division of RailWorks, a national company that builds lines for rail user of all kinds.
He is in charge of Eastern Washington, Oregon, all of Idaho and Montana. "It's big territory to cover," Austin said.
The crews that worked the line with trains operated by the Eastern Washington Gateway Railroad, are based in Chehalis, Wash. and travel across the country doing tie and rail projects.
Work finds Austin and others at RailWorks. "We have a pretty good reputation over the last 30 years of being in business," he said. "(We get) a lot of call-backs."
And use of railroads with which to move goods will continue to increase because it is the most economical way to transport when compared to truck.
"They gotta' move somehow, either by highway or rail and rail's by far the safest and most economical," Austin said.
Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].
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