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CSX Transportation soon will crank up another "Jamboree." On March 17, the railroad plans to begin a track maintenance blitz, which involves rehabilitating mainlines between Mobile, Ala., and New Orleans, and between Flomaton and Montgomery, Ala., in four days.


Eleven tie and rail gangs comprising more than 700 employees will work around the clock during the Jamboree to install 79,000 ties and 150,000 feet of rail, rebuild a 900-foot-long bridge, surface 71 track miles and reconstruct numerous crossings.


If done under normal curfew and work processes, a project this size would disrupt traffic for several weeks, CSXT said in a prepared statement.


Between March 17 and 20, the railroad plans to reroute traffic over other railroads and gateways. CSXT expects traffic to return to normal March 24, the railroad said.


In 1999, a CSXT machine operator coined the term "Jamboree" during a smaller-scale track maintenance project on the railroad's Chicago-to-Evanston, Ind., line.


Since then, the Class I has conducted several Jamborees each year, including one in July 2001 that required 13 tie, rail, curve-patch and bridge gangs comprising more than 800 workers — CSXT's largest Jamboree to date.