Railway Interchange 2017 Buzz

Sessions Speakers Floor Plan Buzz

East Portland Connection Track Expansion (Room Sagamore 7)

19 Sep 17
3:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Tracks: AREMA Technical Sessions By Date- Engineering Services, AREMA Technical Sessions By Functional Group- Engineering Services, AREMA Technical Sessions- Maintenance, Technical Sessions By Day- Monday

Union Pacific railroad recently expanded track in Portland, Oregon. Benefits of the expansion include the following: • Reroute 5- 8 trains daily • Eliminated 20-30 minutes travel time/train • Eliminates 6.4 route miles daily • Increased Velocity • Reduced congestion. The need of the expansion was born out of the necessity to re-route trains onto the Portland Sub via the Graham Line. Based on the location of the existing track and highway infrastructure; the expansion required a redesign of two existing curves to accommodate the introduction of a new curve connecting the Brooklyn Sub to the Graham Line. Due to the high environmental risk of the project we wanted to ensure a tie design that mitigated/eliminated derailment risk while providing a maintenance free solution for our M/W forces. That is when we reached out to Nortrak to work on a concrete tie design that would incorporate all our wants and ensure a safe product with an on time delivery. Collaboration with Nortrak created a concrete tie complete with plates and restraining rail to reduce risk from wheel climb thru continuous raised 33C1 restraining rail and also inner emergency guard rail to keep trains away from highway infrastructure. Custom insulators for the 33C1 restraining rail were added to allow for signal system broken rail detection.