Met a crew of guys at the bar the other night, they travelled quite a bit for a company managing and running equipment for cleaning up railroad accidents, derailments, collisions, you name it, they had some interesting stories. Wondering if any of you guys on HEF have done work like this???
Was it Hulcher Services? They work all of them around here. We had a derail 25 years ago that I got to see first hand how they did it. It wasn't their first rodeo...they were very efficient. What interested me is that their equipment was far from new, but very well maintained and worked like new.
At the derailment in Heimdal a year and a half ago, RJ Corman did the cleanup. They had a fleet of track loaders and sidebooms. The loaders were 951's and 977's, and all looked like new. Not sure what models the sidebooms were, but they were fun to watch. The operators were the best I've ever seen. When they were dragging the wrecked tank cars, there were at least three tractors, sometimes four, and if you didn't know better you'd swear they were all tied together and controlled by one operator. They would move in perfect unison.
There's a company about an hour from me that does heavy towing and recovery and also does train derailments. They've got some cool equipment, I could spend hours walking around in their shops looking at all the equipment.
I've heard of Corman, never seen them in action, just Hulchers. We own 1/2 mile of frontage on the CN mainline going to the tunnel at Port Huron. Shrit happens, never been on our property, but close. Watching Hulchers work is organized chaos.....unreal how fast they can clear cars out and rebuild track. CN has everything in place, local companies drop what they are doing, head to Pontiac for ballast and rail sections.....it gets on site asap. Then, hurry up and wait. Since it's the railroad, nothing matters. Hulchers moves without permits, everything is taken care of after the fact. Springtime weight restrictions.....lmao, they don't exist for railroad infrastructure. Ed
I don't remember the company name, they were getting me and the wife pretty drunk, ha. I just checked out Hulchers website, they have a location in Stockton which is 10min. away from me, I bet it was Hulchers. Maybe I'm just a dork but these guys intrigued me, and they took the work very seriously, one guy was from Texas, and there was an older guy from the Northwest who was being trained. I caught them by surprise when I told them about the business I have repairing diesels and my general knowledge of equipment. We didn't have business cards at the time so they wrote our number on something, could have been a good connection if they followed up....N..E..WAYZ
I know one of our members 95zIV has, I'll invite him to the thread.
The Hulcher Corporate office is here in Denton, Tx. The history of how this company came about, and grew to the size it is today, is fascinating. One of my best friends, retired from there as the Vice Pres. of their equipment fleet. He was with them almost from the beginning. He has some interesting stories to tell. I have had a chance to meet, and do some work for Mr. Hulcher, the founder, who lives not far from me. There is a short video on Youtube where Mr. Hulcher tells how he got started in the derailment business. It is really an interesting story. Do a youtube search for Hulcher Services, and you can find it. Well worth the 10 minutes it takes to watch it. They do run a lot of older machines, but most do not get a lot of hours/year. Every machine is kept in top notch condition and no expense is spared to keep the fleet running and looking like new.
I did a job at the old GTW car shops years ago. Its amazing how fast they run those trains through the tunnel. As far as dropping everything, down time on the rails is crazy expensive. A lot of the freight is just in time. They shove cars out of the way, throw panels in, and get rolling. Some times the clean up is simply that. Other times they will wreck the cars right away. Then environmental can take decades.
Yeah I actually already watched that video, pretty fascinating. Makes me want to drop this gig I have going to help clean up wrecks!