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Union Pacific Railroad is gearing up to receive a “clean air” award and complete trackwork in Kansas and Illinois next month.

Yesterday, the Class I announced it won the 2008 CALSTART Blue Sky Merit Award™ for deploying 160 second-generation GenSet switchers last year. The award recognizes a company’s or individual’s contributions to clean air, energy efficiency and a “clean” transportation industry.

UP’s GenSet is a successor to first-generation diesel-battery hybrid switchers and “can be a platform for future generations of hybrid switching locomotives incorporating energy storage technologies,” CALSTART said. GenSets can reduce emission of oxides of nitrogen and particulate matter up to 80 percent and cut fuel consumption about 16 percent compared with conventional switchers.

CALSTART will hand out 2008 Blue Sky Awards at a ceremony to be held on June 10 in Los Angeles.

About that time, UP will wrap up trackwork on a line between Kansas City and Topeka, Kan., and a bridge approach in Fults, Ill.

The Kansas project calls for installing 44,700 ties, spreading 38,600 tons of rock ballast and replacing road surfaces at 111 grade crossings. To improve the east approach to the McArthur Bridge in Fults, the railroad will install 53,000 ties, spread 34,400 tons of ballast and replace surfaces at 114 crossings.