Norfolk Southern Celebrates Record Infrastructure Improvements of 2022

The Norfolk Southern Engineering Department replaced 475 panel turnouts in 2022 across its network.

Norfolk Southern

Last year, Norfolk Southern's Engineering team completed a variety of enhancement projects aimed at increasing service reliability, productivity, and volume growth while connecting customers to the U.S. and global economies.

“Investing in our infrastructure ensures that we have a consistent and reliable service that our customers can count on,” said Vice President Engineering Ed Boyle. “Over the past year, our teams in Maintenance of Way & Structures, Program Maintenance, Design and Construction, and Bridges and Structures have completed an aggressive schedule of projects that will strengthen our foundation and drive our success well into the future.”

The Maintenance of Way & Structures (MW&S) and Program Maintenance Teams replaced 520.8 miles of program rail in 2022, the most the Class 1 has replaced since 1992, according to a release. 

“We leverage technology to determine our top needs and ensure that we install the right assets, in the right place, at the right time,” said Dwayne Gibson, AVP Maintenance of Way & Structures. “The magnitude of this team effort is a true Operations feat that’s designed to provide a safe infrastructure for our trains to operate.”

Norfolk Southern’s Design and Construction (D&C) team has been focused on designing and building additional long passing sidings on key routes, as well as working at intermodal facilities to increase capacity and throughput, a news release said. 

The D&C team also extended five existing shorter sidings from 10,000 to 15,000 feet as part of this project, including a key network location between Chicago and Cincinnati in Sidney, Indiana.

Last year, the D&C team also rehabilitated and expanded several of its intermodal terminals, providing additional grounding capacity and more efficient container stacking to meet our customers’ needs.

As part of these efforts, extensive repaving at Chicago facilities such as the 47th Street, Landers, and Calumet intermodal facilities was completed. The Charlotte IMF also added a 4,000-foot loading pad track and expanded parking, Norfolk Southern said. 

In 2022, the Bridges and Structures team completed 37 bridge replacements, 92 bridge rehabilitations, and three movable bridge mechanical component replacements, the Class 1 said in a release.

The team completed structural projects including 124 culvert replacements, two pile encasement projects, three retaining wall replacements, four slide fence replacements, and a shiploader hinge pin and dumper gear rack replacements at the Lamberts Point Coal Terminal.