Sean C. Morgan
The Albany and Eastern Railroad Company is planning to repair its track from Lebanon to Sweet Home soon in an effort to improve safety on the line and to help attract industry, and the company is inviting the public to a meeting to discuss its plans at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 22, at the Sweet Home Community Center, 890 18th Ave.
“Basically, we’re redoing the line,” said Mark Russell, general manager of A&E and the Rick Franklin Corporation, the railroad and heavy construction contracting firm that owns A&E. “We’ve done significant work between Lebanon and Mill City.”
A&E recently completed work between Albany and Lebanon, and now it is looking at Lebanon to Sweet Home, he said.
A&E plans to replace some 32,000 railroad ties from Lebanon through Sweet Home. It will remove brush where necessary, especially at crossings; and it will rebuild the crossings, which will impact traffic where it crosses public and private roads and driveways.
Traffic will have to be rerouted, Russell said, but A&E will try to keep closures to two days.
With highways, crews can leave a lane open, Russell said, but rails are more challenging. They require crews to work in the full width of a roadway to replace a crossing.
The Pleasant Valley Road crossing will probably have the largest impact on traffic. It handles more traffic than any other crossing, and detours to Main Street are long.
Russell said he is anticipating working on that road in the fall.
The company’s 70 miles of rails have been pretty neglected for about 50 years, Russell said. The project goal is to raise the Federal Railroad Administration classification of the rails to level two. Right now, parts of the rails fall below the lowest classification. Speeds are limited in some places to as low as 3 mph. When complete, the track will allow speeds of up to 25 mph.
The project is largely funded through a Connect Oregon III grant through the Oregon Department of Transportation using Oregon Lottery dollars. The state will pay for approximately $2.6 million out of $4 million.
The line once carried as many as 100 cars per day out of Sweet Home, Russell said. The line most recently served Overhead Doors, located at 18th and Main; but Overhead Doors is closing (see page 9) A&E’s easternmost customer is WPK, located about four miles west of Sweet Home’s city limits.
With the improvements, A&E officials are hoping to attract some industry to Sweet Home, Russell said. “There’s a safety aspect,” but he and his company are interested in seeing industry and employment opportunities here in east Linn County.
“Our whole goal is to try to incentivize industry back into the area,” Russell said. Historically, timber was a high-volume product. It took up a lot of space, and rails were the most cost effective way to move it.
Rick Franklin’s efforts are not anti-trucking, Russell said. His companies are heavily involved in trucking as well. The rails can relieve congestion. Each car of freight represents three trucks that don’t have to travel through the Portland-Vancouver corridor, for example, when Weyerhaeuser is shipping from Oregon to Longview-Kelso.
Mills also are paying more for wheat delivered by rails because of congestion issues, Russell said, and there is a wheat grower between Lebanon and Sweet Home.
In Sweet Home, “What we’re hoping to do, frankly, we’d like to set up a log sorting yard,” Russell said. Trucks would bring logs down to the yard for sorting onto trains, bringing employment opportunities to Sweet Home.
It isn’t set up yet, but it’s something Russell would like to see.
A&E is owned by Rick and Bernice Franklin. They purchased the railroad in 2007. Rick Franklin also owns Rick Franklin Corporation, which in turn owns Specialized Metals Recycling.
RFC has operated since 1974. RCC is a heavy equipment construction company specializing in the railroad industry and operating throughout Oregon, Washington and Idaho. It also includes a heavy trucking arm. Specialized Metals Recycling recycles rail cars when they’re removed from service.