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Seattle’s New $28M Locomotive Facility Picks Up Steam By Andrea Watts CEG CORRESPONDENT
With the piling work completed for the new Amtrak locomotive service facility, crews are now pouring its concrete foundation and installing the underground mechanical, electrical and utilities. Although the project is only 38 percent complete, construction is ahead of schedule. “We’re scheduled to turn over the building to Amtrak at the end of next January,” said Cody Glasgow, project manager of PCL Construction.
The $28 million locomotive service facility is the latest upgrade Amtrak is making at its Seattle King Street Coach Yard Maintenance Facility. The railroad’s maintenance needs are expected to increase in the future, not only to maintain its current long-distance trainsets that run to Chicago and Los Angeles (the Coast Starlight and the Empire Builder), but also to support the Sound Transit commuter rail service and the state-sponsored Amtrak Cascades trains. Amtrak has longterm contracts to maintain the
Amtrak photo
When completed, the new maintenance service facility will be 80 ft. wide, 53 ft. tall and 325 ft. long and have two rail lines inside the building so the locomotives can be driven inside the facility.
Amtrak photo
locomotives for these services. “We have used [the building] that we had available, but it was never designed for servicing locomotives,” explained Dan Radeke, project manager of Amtrak. “For example, it does not have a drop table to change out traction motors, and it doesn’t have an overhead crane for doing overhead work.” Currently, light maintenance is done in several locations throughout Seattle, but locomotives that require To construct the maintenance service facility’s foundation, 178 pipe heavy maintenance are sent piles were needed and because of the soil-bearing capacity and seismic to Los Angeles. considerations, they had to be driven 200 ft. below grade. PCL Construction was
awarded the design-bid-build project and received notice to proceed on May 24, 2017. This isn’t the first Amtrak project the company has undertaken at the Seattle King Street Coach Yard Maintenance Facility. In 2012, the company was awarded the $50-million-dollar project to construct a new administration building, and maintenance and equipment buildings; this design-build project won the Design-Build Institute of America 2013 National Honor Award in the Industrial/Process/Research Facilities Category. “What attracted us to working with Amtrak again is that their staff are excellent to work with,” said Glasgow. “They have a partner
mentality in how they operate through this challenging build, which is great because it aligns with our goals to complete this project in the most efficient and successful manner possible.” Once constructed, the new maintenance facility will be 80 ft. (24.3 m) wide, 53 ft. (16.1 m) tall, and 325 ft. (99 m) long and have two rail lines inside the building so the locomotives can be driven inside the facility. One crucial maintenance feature will be the drop table, which is housed in a pit and raised underneath the locomotive so the mechanics can replace the combined axles and traction motors of the locomotives. see AMTRAK page 10