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Roanoke Material Yard: Safe, Green, Efficient NS’ REALLY BIG BUSINESS New Opportunities in Norfolk and Atlanta Summer 2015

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Roanoke Material Yard: Safe, Green, Efficient NS’ REALLY BIG BUSINESS New Opportunities in Norfolk and Atlanta Summer 2015 Roanoke Material Yard: safe, green, efficient NS’ REALLY BIG BUSINESS New opportunities in Norfolk and Atlanta Summer 2015 | RUNNING ON RAILROAD TIME Volume 7, Issue 1 7, Volume i am Coming Home… Summer 2015 Safe, green, efficient ROANOKE MATERIAL 1 YARD EMPLOYEES ADD VALUE ENGINEERING 6 LEADERS ‘LIKE’ ROANOKE MATERIAL YARD NS’ REALLY BIG 8 BUSINESS NORFOLK AND 12 ATLANTA PREPARE FOR ROANOKE EMPLOYEES RUNNING ON 16 RAILROAD TIME WHY WE WORK 19 SAFELY AT NS – I AM COMING HOME FROM THE 21 NS ARCHIVES BACK NS GETTING COVER GREENER: GAINS IN FUEL EFFICIENCY 2 BizNS Summer 2015 Safe, green, efficient ROANOKE MATERIAL YARD EMPLOYEES ADD VALUE TO RAILROAD OPERATIONS If a Norfolk Southern track gang needs a No. 20 frog in a hurry, they’re not going to find that $20,000 appliance at the local Home Depot or Wal-Mart. Their go-to source for fast delivery is a facility that’s been serving wayside maintenance gangs since the 1930s – the Roanoke Material Yard. Based on a steel-tough commitment, the material yard’s crew will have the frog – the part of a switch turnout where train wheels move from one track to another – safely loaded on a rail car and shipped within 24 hours. That’s the way they roll. Created by NS predecessor railroad Norfolk and Western Railway, the Roanoke facility is a one-of- a-kind operation in today’s rail industry. Unknown to many employees outside of track maintenance, the material yard provides key support to the NS Engineering Department to keep trains running and customers satisfied. Five days a week, the yard’s 50 or so craft workers construct switch turnouts and 42-foot track panels, eliminating days of field work for track and rail gangs and enabling quick repairs to damaged track. They sort through tons of used track material to identify reusable components, reducing the need to buy new and saving the company millions of dollars annually. The yard also stockpiles and distributes virtually every component needed to maintain and repair track n Laborers Terrence Saunders, left, and switch turnouts, from spikes, tie plates, and rail and Glenn Lilly identify reusable roadway anchors to rail, switch points, and frogs – so named track materials while working the conveyor because they resemble a frog with outstretched legs. belt at Roanoke Material Yard. 1 “We’re a supply chain to our maintenance-of-way gangs,” said Mike Wolfe, yard manager, a 33-year NS veteran who worked 20 years in program n TOP: The Roanoke Material Yard maintenance before joining the yard 13 years ago. “We’re almost like an industry stores and distributes virtually every for in-house servicing.” component needed to maintain and repair track and switch turnouts, including “frogs,” pictured here. Safe, efficient, quality product Located in an industrial area on a dead-end road minutes from downtown Roanoke, Frogs, so named because they resemble the 58-acre facility harkens to an era before the country’s large railroads began a frog with outstretched legs, are part outsourcing many of their supply chain needs. of a switch turnout where train wheels When N&W opened the material yard, for example, the railroad still built its move from one track to another. own locomotives. Old photographs in the hallway outside Wolfe’s office reveal the breadth of work in the yard’s early days. N&W employees there once welded n NEXT PAGE LEFT: Mike Wolfe, left, rail with acetylene produced on-site, manufactured steel frogs and switch points, yard manager, reviews track material which were hand-ground on grinding wheels, and constructed the company’s office paperwork with Marty Huff, shipping furniture, Wolfe said. and receiving supervisor. “The concept of this facility was that everything was made in-house so that they could control their own destiny and pricing,” Wolfe said. n NEXT PAGE RIGHT: Jake Willis, Across operations, Norfolk Southern has maintained that concept of self-reliance panel supervisor, stands next to a pile where it makes strategic and economic sense to do so, such as the locomotive of tie plates reclaimed for reuse across rebuild program at Juniata and Roanoke locomotive shops. The functions the system. performed today by the material yard – while no longer involving the manufacture of furniture, welded rail, or frogs – generate cost and competitive advantages. 2 BizNS Summer 2015 Sustainable “Norfolk Southern is one operation of the few Class I railroads The yard plays a key that actively reclaims track role in advancing green business at NS. material the way we do. When maintenance My goal is to help the gangs replace track, company save money and the recovered metal “The material yard plays an important role in the materials – tie plates, be more efficient in using safety, efficiency, and success of our supervisors spikes, and anchors, our resources.” and production gangs in maintaining the railroad’s known as other track infrastructure,” said Phil Merilli, assistant vice material, or OTM – are president maintenance of way and structures. “With loaded on gondolas and — Jake Willis, the yard operation, we are able to control costs sent to the material yard. panel supervisor and our own destiny by controlling inventory. The There, an employee employees who work there are a class act, and I’m operating an excavator unloads the OTM onto a large proud to be associated with them.” metal table and rakes it onto a long conveyor belt. The material yard is a success for three reasons, Employees stationed on a boardwalk beside the belt Wolfe said. The yard’s laborers and machine operators identify reusable items and place them into bins for produce quality work, they do it efficiently, and, most each type of OTM. The yard can sort one to two gons important, they do it safely. a day, or 70 to 140 tons of material. “All of our employees here are owners of the About 60 percent of the OTM is reused. Some business, if you will, and they understand that safety is used at the yard to construct track panels, while is part of that business,” Wolfe said. “We’re the last the rest is shipped to the field for track maintenance of the Class I railroads with a yard like this. It’s not projects on lower-tonnage secondary or branch lines. viable unless you have a safe environment.” None of the OTM goes to a landfill. The 40 percent or Wolfe counts two reportable injuries over the past so identified as scrap is sold to vendors who recycle decade, neither directly related to work in the yard. it for other uses. “When you see all the exposures of railroad work “We make money either way,” said Jake Willis, here,” Wolfe said, “all of the heavy, moving machinery panel supervisor, who oversees the yard’s OTM and the hydraulic, pneumatic, and electrical equipment, reclamation and track panel construction. the employees are exemplary on safety.” 3 In nearly three years as panel supervisor, Willis has focused on expanding recycling and improving work efficiencies. In 2014, his OTM crew reclaimed 1.2 million tie plates, 11,000 kegs of spikes, and 850,000 rail anchors, saving the company an estimated $15 million. “Norfolk Southern is one of the few Class I railroads that actively reclaims track material the way we do,” Willis said. “My goal is to help the company save money and be more efficient in using our resources.” Reusing track materials, Wolfe said, enables NS to time purchases of new material based on best available market price. “When steel prices are high, we can ride them out by reusing what we already have,” he said. “On a good day, we ship In January, the yard’s green operations expanded with the arrival of the second- generation NS 999. The yard has served as proving ground for the battery-powered material to nine or 10 states. switcher, helping NS develop its expertise of battery technology for train service We try to send something to while using the 999 to help build a daily outbound train that delivers supplies to each division and spread it the field. around so that no territory is left without material in case Keeping the gangs supplied Much of the yard’s activity occurs in a flat open area that extends down the something happens.” middle of the facility and is dominated by a large overhead gantry crane. Bridge cranes on either end hoist rail and material used to build track panels and turnouts. — Marty Huff, Turnout and track panel crews work on opposite ends of the gantry crane. On a typical day, employees can build as many as three switch turnouts – with shipping and receiving a switch on one end and a frog on the other – and 15 of the 42-foot track panels. supervisor To quickly assemble ties and rail, the crews have devised custom jigs, or templates, for efficiency. The turnout crew, for example, has marked a pad with different colors of paint to pinpoint where to place crossties for each of the six sizes of turnouts built there. 4 BizNS Summer 2015 “These employees have done it so much they know the measurements in their heads,” said Adam Dunford, turnout supervisor. The yard, he added, has fewer operating challenges than the field. “We’re in a controlled environment where everything is flat.” n PREVIOUS PAGE LEFT: Laborer Zach Switch turnouts are constructed with new track material. The track panels are Divers operates a hydraulic magnetic lifter built with both new and used components, including used rail, called relay rail. to maneuver 112-pound bags of reclaimed After a track panel is installed in the field, rail gangs follow to replace the rail with rail anchors off a conveyor belt.
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