CSX Transportation undergoing major track project

CSX Transportation Inc. is suspending rail operations for five days, from July 2-6, on nearly 400 miles of track in the southeastern United States. The company will refurbish highway-rail grade crossings, tracks and bridges.

“Customarily, we would perform this type of maintenance during narrow work windows over a period of many weeks. We decided to take a very aggressive approach to accomplish this work to minimize service disruption to our customers and the impact on the general public. While we’ve used this concept for smaller-scale maintenance jobs in the past, this is the first time CSXT has used the approach for a project of this magnitude,” said W. Michael Cantrell, senior vice president-engineering and mechanical.

Over the course of five days, about 800 workers will install more than one million spikes, replace more than 100,000 crossties and 18 miles of rail, rebuild or repair 14 bridges and rehabilitate nearly 50 grade crossing surfaces.

Some 200 trains that ordinarily would have travelled along these rail corridors will be detoured over other CSXT routes or via other railroads for the project’s duration.