Intermodal rail facility rolls on to Phase Two

Bob Turner, senior vice president of corporate relations for the Union Pacific Railroad, presented a progress report on the massive project at the Santa Teresa Country Club on Dec. 19 to regional and state business leaders.

“In the next six to eight months, you will see buildings coming up out of the ground,” said Turner. “This project is easily the biggest one we have going” anywhere on the UP network.

The first phase, which started in the summer of 2011, involved the relocating of a power line and access road, installation of storm water culverts and utility channels under the main tracks – and the movement of 5.94 million cubic yards of excavation. If that quantity of material were placed in 53-foot containers, and double-stacked on train cars, it would be a length that would stretch the same distance as the 260 miles from Santa Teresa to Albuquerque.

Turner noted one logistical advantage of the new facility. Modern freight trains typically have locomotives at both ends of the train, and Santa Teresa will be the first UP facility configured with the ability to fuel both ends simultaneously.

The Santa Teresa facility boasts the largest footprint of any on the UP system, and is unique in that it will be at the technological leading

edge in all aspects.

“It will be unique on our system in the sense that it’s all modern,” Turner said.

The immediate impact of the $400 million project is employment. There are an average of 170 workers on site daily in Phase One. Seventy percent of the contract value is being provided by New Mexico contractors.

The longer-term impact is anticipated to be a major development of related enterprises around the UP facility, taking advantage of the easy movement of goods it will provide to virtually anywhere on earth.

Current and future manufacturers or producers of agricultural products all over New Mexico will have a convenient and cost-effective mode of transport to markets across the country and to the Pacific Rim, via UP’s Sunset Route and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach – or to the heartland of America, going the other way on UP’s lines. One could recall the economic impact of the Santa Fe Railroad’s yards in Albuquerque in the early 20th century to imagine the regional potential of this project.

UP already has the greatest variety of rail connections to Mexico, with six along its line paralleling the border from the Pacific coast up across the Texas portion of the border. Currently freight traffic across the border is almost evenly matched between imports and exports, Turner said. He was not optimistic on the near-term potential for construction of the crossing proposed through Santa Teresa, to replace the current one through El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico.

“I think that crossing at some point will happen, but I don’t know when it will come,” Turner said. “I think it’s just going to take a little time before it’s ready to go.”

Turner said the fueling facility would be the first phase to go on line.

Second will be the intermodal facility – the cranes and ramps to facilitate the movement of the giant cargo boxes from train cars to trucks and vice versa.

“That project (the intermodal yard) is well under way,” with a timeline to finish by the beginning of 2015, Turner said. He added that this portion was the one with the greatest potential for related development and for freight service for the entire state.

Track and switching facilities for “block swapping” is the final phase, and is currently slowed down a little relative to the total project. Block swapping is the ability to easily transfer strings of cars in a block between different trains.

Jon Barela, cabinet secretary of economic development, extended greetings to Turner from Gov. Susana Martinez.

“We appreciate your investment, your confidence in the state,” Barela said.