Folks,

I need some information about building railroad tracks.

Lets say that a museum wants to build some straight tracks for a new car Barn. And they already have the rails. How much does it cost to build the
tracks?

Do you pay for it by the rail section or by (say 100 foot lengths)?

Second is the matter of switches; do they cost more to put in?

While volunteers can and do build track, I assume that professionals can do it much faster than volunteers working four Saturdays a month?

And I certainly do not mean to slight all the volunteer track gangs out there! But there is the matter of time and machinery.

Ted Miles

Contractors will bid by the foot inclusive of material and labor. With or without material, price will vary widely depending on how much work they have and how much of a hurry you are in. Prices vary widely by region. The Bay area would not rank as one of the lower priced regions.

Contractors will bid by the foot for labor only but make sure you have everything they need first. To give an accurate price, they'll need know everything about the track including tie spacing, depth of ballast, tie size, hard or softwood, length of rails, etc. A specification would help, such as something derived from AREMA specs. - contractors will understand that and not add "extra" to make up for the unknown.

Make sure everything is in writing - some crews we've encountered recently are (conveniently) unable to speak english.

You could consider hiring experienced workers directly through your local union office.

Ted, Books have been written on this, so it is probably not simple enough to give an answer here. What weight is the rail, do you have all the joint hardware, what is the tie spacing, will tie plates be used, is the land graded and drained, is there access for machinery??

For light duty carbarn track, you MIGHT get away with a ballpark number of $150 per foot, assuming it is a sizable contract. Do not expect to get away with $1500 for a job to add ten feet of track. And that is probably a number excuding ballast, leveling, lining and tamping.

A turnout can run anywhere up to $15K with you having some or all of the parts, and material already. Labor to assemble only maybe $6K-$8K.

So, just like so many museum undertakings, I suspect that volunteer labor is generally undervalued, and few realize the tremendous contribution made by the weekend warriors. In the case of building track, it can largely be done by grunt work as in a century ago, but many museums are collecting and investing in mechanization to make the job go faster and easier. Just an air hammer and compressor can let one guy spike a lot of rail in a day.

Bob Kutella

I guess I can talk on this topic safely, since I hold the rank, for what it is worth (that and 50 cents may buy me a small coffee), MoW Foreman & chief track grunt (aka Bullwork specialist ;<) ) here at the Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum, in Willimantic, Ct. About 8-10 years ago, we got a price to have track laid, 22" tie centers, std gauge, all materials supplied by CERRM, (rail, ties, tie plates, joint bars, bolts, spikes and ballast) and RoW was to be pre-graded and centerline staked by CERRM, before contractor was to start work. From what I was told, the price rounded to just under $1,000,000 per mile for the contractor to assemble the track, ballast, tamp and elevate the curve (0.5-1"). Any switch work would be extra. Depending on your location and relationship with a contractor, your price may be different. I have heard 2-500,000 per switch for the same conditions as mentioned above.

To date we have laid almost 3/4 mile, reconditioned about 1/2-3/4 mile of existing (tie replacement and tamping the bad areas), and installed 3 switches. Currently we are working on switch 4 & 5. Most of the new work has been done since 2000, along with reconditioning and partial installation of a turntable, 3 roundhouse pits, adding window & doors to the rebuilt Roundhouse. This work has been done with all volunteer labor, thankfully some of those volunteers are also contractors with some handy equipment. During one gang busting day before our grand opening a crew of three of us with a hydraulic spiker, spiked about 250 feet, which was preceded by 3-4 weekends of grading, base ballast, tie spacing, rail setting, and gaging.

Also keep in mind, for getting into and out of your barn, if the prep work has been done correctly (ground and base ballast grading) you can run safely and carefully with only basic tamping, as long as the ties are supported, they don't have to be fully level and filled with ballast. Not sure of your time schedule, since you mentioned it, but from what I have seen, a crew of 10 guys (40-60 year old average, none of which have railroad experience) can do about 250 feet of track or 1 switch in a month of weekends, all work inclusive, in cool weather, with an air compressor, air spiker, air tamper, spike puller to lift the ties into the hammer, a few rail jacks, spike maul or two, track bolt wrenches and a Backhoe. A railsaw and rail drill is optional, if the switch was pulled as a set and the pieces are put back in the same spot.

If you get your own equipment, I would suggest if you are using hardwood ties, avoid the hydraulic spiker. We have hit many spots in the ties where the tie was too dense for the spiker. You could literally start the spiker in the morning, and lean on it all day and spike may be fully set by evening, whereas an air spiker at 80 psi will blast straight through. Also, at least with our Gleismar spiker, the spiker relies on the spike to retract the cylinder for the next hit, whereas the air spiker fully retracts the piston for each strike. So if the hard spot occurs when the spike is an inch or two from the plate, you won’t even get a full hit. Thus a spike maul need to be used. The unfortunate tradeoff is that the hydraulic unit weighs about 50-60 percent of an air powered one.

Have fun,

Rich Cizik
MoW Foreman
Ct Eastern RR Museum
Willimantic, Ct 06226
www.cteastrrmuseum.org

That's a LOT of money!

Ted, you could fly 40-50 WW&F volunteers out there, feed and house them, and save
$983,451.22 per track mile ;-)

One million dollars per mile and $500,000.00 for a switch are the kind of prices I would expect a class I railroad to charge for such work. No matter how you cut it that is outragous unless a lot of grading is also required. Here in North Carolina we can get track built for $50.00 to $75.00 per foot if we suply the material. We generally get switches from 132 pound rail down built for around $20,000.00. That includes the material.

We are currently rebuiding 3.5 miles of track in South Carolina that has not seen a train in at least 30 years. The line had to be logged before roadbed reconstruction could begin. Several big pipes are being replaced and the others cleaned. The contractors are suppling everything. The total cost is in the 2.5 million dollar range. That is a long way from $1,000,000.00 per mile just to construct what amounts to a yard track on something resembling a roadbed.

John Bohon

Ted,

We had to rebuild 570 feet of display track. The work included removing the old track structure, regrading the line, all new ties on 24"centers, new tie plates, new spikes and ballast. The old rail was reused. The track was lined and leveled by hand because the track is adjacent to a passenger platform and mechanized equipment did not have the necessary clearance to work.

The cost for the above work was a little over $28,000, and this was supposed to be a discounted rate since we piggybacked our job on top of a yard renewal job for a local shortline operator. No mobilization of equipment and crew to pay for. Quick calculation makes the cost per mile around $260,000, well below a million-dollar mile.

Our museum in Wichita just completed a major track renovation project that was due to the relocation and elevation of the main line next to us. The cost for removal and relay of just under 3,000 ft of 110lb rail with 4 switches was $175,000.00 this was done by a track contractor. I will warn you if you have a contractor do your work get everything in writing and make sure you have a representive on the job site every day that they are working. We did not have to pay the above cost but we found out the track crew did not understand english and also did not understand grade stakes. If you have only one switch and several hundred feet of track I would suggest you do it yourselves. Prior to the above project we installed a #10 turnout and just over 600 ft of track. The turnout took two weekends with 6 people and a loader backhoe and a bobcat. You can have a dirt contractor come in and do your grade for you. A good backhoe operator can cut your grade in to withint one tenth of an inch. We used relay ties and pluged them set on 24" centers. We had a crew of six to do the track work and used our winch truck and a loader. I would recomend a 60# or 80# air hammer with a spike head to do your spiking it will save a lot of time and sore backs. We used a gas powered chop saw to cut our rails and due to the fact we were not running on this at any speed we did cut our bolt holes with a tourch. Email me if you have questions.

Please take the time to drill the holes.

"Please take the time to drill the holes." Jim I realize the importance to drill the holes for joint bars on track that will be operated over for other than display use. The average volunteer org. does not have access to portable gasoline hole saws or to rail drills. Have you ever tried to drill a hole thru the web with a electric drill and common hole saw. I have been building railroad right of way and bridges for almost 20 yrs and would never suggest that this be done out on the mainline or even in a yard but in a display area where you might switch the equipment 4 or 5 times a year at a walking speed and one or two cars at a time with no loads, one or two holes will not cause any harm. Yes I do know that heat causes problems with the head of a section of rail but you need to look at the whole picture and not just make it sound like you have violated a commandment and the whole thing is condemned.

Our turntable work here included approximately 1200' of track. We supplied 130lb rail and all the other materials - plates, ties, joint bars, spikes, ballast, etc. This job was funded with public money and therefore was bid at State prevailing wages and came in at $50 per foot.

Four years ago, RMNE was looking at building two mainline turnouts-- one a re-install of a removed one, the other a totally new one for our shop yard lead. We had all the iron (NH 107, #10 flat frogs), and had quotes for new switch timber (about $3000 per set). One contractor wanted $24K for the pair to do the install, another wanted $32K per pair. Both of them were going to supply labor, a backhoe and a tamper only. We quickly decided to learn how to do it ourselves, and bought a new railsaw, a drill, and a rail bender for $5K. The first turnout took 12 working days. The second took 9 working days.

We have since built two more (#8s) in the shop yard, they were about 6 working days each. Another #8 is about to be started in the next month.

Once the roadbed is finish-graded, our old men (mostly 40-70 year olds, with a few 30-somethings) can lay out and complete about 200-250 feet of plain track in a day--- lined and ready for ballasting. This past Sunday, we did another 75 feet in 5 hours. In the last 2 years, we've built 1000 feet of track for our Shop Yard and lead in addition to the turnouts. And, that project is in addition to maintaining 19 miles of railroad (ties, surfacing, brush, etc., etc.).

If a group has to use contractors for track, learn enough about track and turnouts so that you don't get B.S.'d; there are plenty of poor track contractors out there. Watch them carefully to be sure you're getting a decent job.

A good rule of thumb is $125 per foot for plain track on already-graded roadbed (using new ties and good relay rail, and stone ballast), and $25-35K for a complete turnout depending on complexity (again, relay steel, new timbers and ballast).

One last thing: one of the satisfying moments in this whole crazy game is looking over nice, well-laid track and switchwork at the end of a day spent building it. It's about as good as taking off the masking tape and paper after a major rolling stock/loco restoration and paint project!

Hand drills are available, and, power drills don't cost that much. I borrow one from a local rr contractor whenever we need one.