In mid-July, Belt Railway Co. of Chicago (BRC) track and signal employees helped replace the Clearing Yards’ master retarder and group 3 retarder. The railroad contracted Cranemasters Inc. to handle the project, which required an 18-hour track outage to complete. BRC crews also performed a yard sweep of all tracks that were out of service to clear debris, replaced switch components and ties, and performed surfacing work to take advantage of the outage. The Clearing Yards — a 5.5-mile-long facility covering about 786 acres between Chicago and Bedford Park near Chicago Midway International Airport — has 19 retarders, including 10 in the east classification bowl and nine in the west bowl. View a time-lapse video of the project below.
Video courtesy of Cranemasters Inc.; photo courtesy of the BRC
Belt Retarder Replacement Chicago, IL from CRANEMASTERS on Vimeo.
