Rail Road Ties

For CSX' Spatafore, a clean railroad is a safe railroad

With a railway network spanning about 21,000 miles, it seems like a monumental job to keep track of all the debris that may be left along the tracks.

But Richard Spatafore has made it his mission to ensure CSX Corp.'s rail network is as clean as possible. He's even won a national award for his efforts.

"A cleaner railroad is naturally a safer railroad," said Spatafore, division engineer in Jacksonville for CSX.

Spatafore has instituted a program at CSX called "No Spike Left Behind" to identify scrap railroad spikes and other waste material along the tracks and in the company's rail yards. Once the material is identified, it is recycled or stored for future use.

"For years and years, we put material on the right of way," Spatafore said. But the company did not have a system for keeping track of the materials that may be left behind once work on a part of its network is completed.

"It identifies everything on our right of way," he said. "We're cleaning everything up and then organizing it once we clean it up."

It sounds simple, but the Association of American Railroads found it innovative enough that last month, it named Spatafore this year's winner of its John H. Chafee Environment Excellence Award. Named for the late Rhode Island senator who advocated for environmental causes, the award recognizes a railroad employee who has "demonstrated the highest level of environmental stewardship during the previous year," the AAR says.

Spatafore's program benefits CSX financially. He said the company uses expensive first-grade steel on its spikes, so recovering unused ones for future projects saves money.

But the program also benefits the environment, because it cleans up waste material such as asphalt that can get into soil and waterways near the tracks.

"When we leave a job, it should be like we've never been there," Spatafore said.

The AAR said in a news release announcing his award that "the program has served to strengthen the partnership between the engineering, purchasing and environmental departments and enhance the company's record of environmental compliance."

"Richard Spatafore is committed to serving not only his company, but also the environment," AAR President and CEO Edward Hamberger said in the release.

"Dick Spatafore personifies CSX's commitment to the environment. His work shows how sustainability is not only a fundamental management principle at CSX, but it's just plain good business," CSX Chairman and CEO Michael Ward said.

University, Company Engineers Research Safer Railroad Ties ...

Engineers at Kansas State University in Manhattan and the company CXT Concrete Ties in Tucson, Arizona have received funding for research leading to safer railroad ties to support the nation’s new high-speed rail projects. The engineering team was awarded a grant for nearly $900,000 from the Federal Railroad Administration, with another $300,000 provided by CXT Concrete Ties and the K-State Transportation Center.

The engineers say high-speed rail requires prestressed concrete railroad ties, since the traditional wooden cross ties are too flexible. For these railroad ties to be effective, prestressing forces must be applied at a considerable distance before the rail load is applied. Rail planners call this prestressing force transfer length. To resist the heavier impact of the higher speeds, concrete ties employ about 20 steel wires, each stressed to around 7,000 pounds. If the prestressed force is not properly transferred, failures can occur in the track.

The project will focus on creating an adequate bond between the steel wires and surrounding concrete. All factors will be examined, including the mixtures of concrete, as well as the wires and indents that allow for better bonding. The team will also develop a test that prestressed concrete producers can use to determine the bond capacity of specific types of wire.

The team will then move to CXT Concrete Ties’s prestressed concrete plant in Tucson. At the plant, railroad ties with 12 different wires and three different strands will be produced, with measurements taken of the transfer length in those ties.

The team will use a transfer length measurement device based on laser-speckle imaging developed by the K-State research team. The laser-speckle device images the surface of the tie before and after de-tensing, and subsequently plots the strain profile of the tie. “We can tell by the strain profile how far from the end of the tie the prestressed force is transferred with each of the different reinforcing types,” says engineering professor Bob Peterman.

The team will then make recommendations to the Federal Railroad Administration on the appropriate methods to ensure good-bonding reinforcing steel, the best concrete, and related factors to create durable prestressed concrete ties.

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