Over a recent planned 24-hour Engineering outage in June, Norfolk Southern completed two major infrastructure enhancements at Norris Yard in Irondale, Alabama. The yard’s primary speed controller and scale had both reached the end of their useful life requiring replacement. This was no small feat when nearly 50 trains move through the yard daily. 

The success of this project was the result of careful planning and coordination between multiple Norfolk Southern teams. To prepare, all inbound train traffic was diverted for 24 hours. Over 200 Norfolk Southern employees and contractors worked around the clock. They were aided by a fleet of cranes, excavators, bulldozers, trucks, and material handling trucks.

First up, was the installation of a new speed controller. This safely controls the speed of railcars as they descend into the hump yard and helps to prevent damage to both equipment and our customer’s freight. In just 18-hours, a team of four cranes removed and replaced the old speed controller, while the ground leading from the speed controller was excavated and backfilled with fresh asphalt and ballast.

Next was the yard’s 70-year-old scale bridge. Replaced in three sections, the new USDA certified scale weighs within 0.2% accuracy and helps ensure customer’s goods are measured correctly.  Both projects are expected to have a life span of several decades and provide resilience in our ability to be a customer-centric, operations-driven railroad.

“The Engineering Department succeeds as ONE TEAM and that was fully demonstrated by our Line Maintenance, Program Maintenance, Bridges and Structures, Design and Construction, Maintenance Equipment and Engineering Planning and Technology groups planning, preparing, and executing this critical outage to meet our in-service commitment. We also utilized the Team of Teams approach by bringing Engineering, Communications and Signals, Transportation, the NOC, NPO and other groups together to complete this project in a very tight timeline,” said Ed Boyle, VP Engineering. “We had multiple contingency plans so that nothing was left to chance and maximized our planned outage. This project proved once again that we can overcome every challenge by working as ONE TEAM.”

To maximize the yard’s planned outage, the team also simultaneously replaced the track leading up to the hump with a 425-foot track panel, as well as track switches, while elevating the hump’s grade. Engineering also replaced three turnouts between the hump and the north end of the receiving yard. This critical infrastructure processes the majority of Norris Yard’s traffic and is difficult to maintain due to its location within the yard.

This significant project is part of Norfolk Southern’s $1 billion annual investment in infrastructure throughout our 22-state network.