On the right track

Contractors tackle new projects for railway clients

From historic renovations, platform construction and signature architectural additions to upgrading infrastructure on train tracks and deep underground, railroad clients are moving forward with a string of construction projects.

As Alliance Exterior Construction, Wohlsen Construction and Scaffold Resource have learned, successfully delivering projects for rail clients requires extraordinarily lengthy and intricate planning, new levels of safety measures, and an ability to execute work in unusually challenging sites.

“There seems to be a lot of investment happening in rail infrastructure, especially from Amtrak, but we’re also seeing a lot of [WMATA] Metro station improvements and projects with other regional authorities,” said Skutch Montgomery, Director of Sales and Estimating at Alliance Exterior Construction.

Last year, Alliance landed a contract to work on a major infrastructure expansion at Amtrak’s Ivy City rail yard in Washington, D.C.

“They are expanding their maintenance facility to cover more of the tracks so they can service more trains at the same time,” Montgomery said. “Our scope will be very similar to what we did at the MARC Riverside Heavy Maintenance Facility in Baltimore – pretty much the whole exterior with an insulated metal panel wall system, skylights, polycarbonate glazing.”

This spring, Alliance will begin construction of an architectural canopy at the Crystal City Metro station.

“It’s an intriguing design and they’re dressing up something that doesn’t typically get dressed up,” he said. “But there’s a lot of investment in rail projects right now and the station is next to Amazon HQ2.”

A major challenge with projects for rail clients is the extended planning and long timeline, Montgomery said. Alliance began planning for the Ivy City project two years ago and won’t complete work there until the end of 2028. Negotiating and holding materials prices over such lengthy periods requires exceptional efforts, appropriate contract provisions and highly committed partners, he said.

Rehabbing a century-old station

At the Lancaster Amtrak station, Wohlsen Construction recently completed a two-year project that completely demolished and replaced the station’s north and south platforms, restored its historic 1920s canopy, renovated a pedestrian bridge, and restored or replaced windows and terrazzo floor inside the station.

“The project was more of a logistics challenge than a construction challenge,” said Louis Gonsauls, Senior Project Manager.

To demolish and replace the south platform, crews had to work within a narrow strip between the station and active rail lines.

To make the most of space, “we came up with a unique way to cover the track that had been taken out of service,” Gonsauls said. “That gave us an additional eight feet of working surface but it was still a very tight site.”

Within those confines, crews had to contend with unexpectedly difficult underground conditions. Sinkholes and geological conditions that placed bedrock anywhere from 30 to 120 feet below the surface complicated the process of driving micropiles and completing compaction grouting.

While they demolished the south platform, they also had to preserve the 400-foot-long, cast-iron canopy that had sheltered commuters for a century. As they cut away the wood decking and concrete slab, they cross-braced the canopy’s iron columns “so when the platform was completely removed, there was no lateral load that could have tipped the canopy over,” he said.

The project team also had to devise a method to deliver and install the new pre-cast beams and deck sections. Drivers had to back tractor trailers down the narrow work site where a 100-ton crawler crane could pick the precast pieces – measuring up to 13 by 20 feet and weighing as much as 38,000 pounds – and move them into place.

Logistical challenges extended to exceptionally detailed coordination with the client. In addition to understandably intense safety requirements and the need to adjust all construction activities around train operations, Amtrak follows a lengthy and complex contracting, planning and approvals process.

“It is also a very large organization with a lot of different departments and sometimes the departments don’t talk to each other,” Gonsauls said. “So understanding their processes and building good relationships was essential.”

Working deep underground

At the Chevy Chase and Wheaton Metro stations, the crew from Scaffold Resource recently faced an entirely different but also daunting work site. The two locations are part of a six-station renovation by WMATA to repair concrete ventilation shafts that have been damaged by water and to replace rusted access stairs within those shafts.

Providing crews with access to those work sites, however, would require specialized scaffolding.

“The smaller shaft of the two is 15 by 15 feet wide and 86 feet deep. The bigger shaft is 30 by 30 feet and 228 feet deep,” said Rolando Pohl, Project Manager at Scaffold Resource.

“Shaft work can be really complicated,” said Steve Quaerna, Vice President of Business Development and Event Infrastructure. “You need to learn about all the obstructions in the shaft, like ductwork and other MEP equipment, and design around that but still give workers full access to the walls of the shaft.”

You also have to get equipment and scaffold installers to the bottom of a 228-foot shaft. To accomplish that, a steel subcontractor reinforced the stairway then Scaffold Resource installed a gantry with a 2,000-pound hoist above the shaft’s opening.

“We were able to pick up full racks of equipment and lower them down,” Pohl said. Although at times, “we had to use a rope and wheel and bring materials down by hand, a few pieces at a time. It was a lot of manual labor and it was very slow going in the beginning.”

The four-person crew was able to complete scaffold installation in each shaft in 63 days. 

Scaffold Resource is slated to work on the other four ventilation shaft projects in the next few years and has also landed a multi-year contract to facilitate electrical upgrades at eight WMATA stations.

Featured in this article: Wohlsen Construction, Scaffold Resource, Alliance Exterior Construction