 |
Re: Lagunitas Spur (Petaluma) Big Choo-choo's ain't cheap.....
Author: BOB2
Date: 05-16-2017 - 11:42
$700 k just for the CTC switch, in today's dollars....
And, then add in whatever additional trackage configuration they are building for the loading, with things like maybe an additional "yard" switch, run around, and/or a storage track, yeah easily a million.....on a passenger mainline. And, it's a small installation of one switch with limited economies of scale.
They put a lot of these from the industrial leads in the LA/LB Harbor/Dolores, for access onto the CTC'd portions of the Alameda Corridor, and I've seen them on ML spurs, and with multiple installations, so you can find bigger jobs maybe, at a lower price, because there are economies of scale, in those larger projects from design, procurement, better utilization of equipment and personnel, etc..
This big choo-choo stuff isn't cheap. So I was only surprised that they'd thought it would be $250k in the first place. So who (among my potential business rivals, should they offer a contract for more competent advice in the future?) and what did they charge an hour to gave them that number?
There are two or three dozen of us just on this site (who are neither trolls, nor dreamy eyed foamers, or folks who last built one in 1963....) who worked for real RR's or have planned and/or engineered rail RR's, and could have told them this. You just add up engineering and design costs, materials, wages, equipment costs, overhead, and profit, from the vast volumes of currently available cost data on similar projects, and like magic......math works.
And, then add in whatever additional trackage configuration they are building for the loading, with things like maybe an additional "yard" switch, run around, and/or a storage track, yeah easily a million.....on a passenger mainline. And, it's a small installation of one switch with limited economies of scale.
They put a lot of these from the industrial leads in the LA/LB Harbor/Dolores, for access onto the CTC'd portions of the Alameda Corridor, and I've seen them on ML spurs, and with multiple installations, so you can find bigger jobs maybe, at a lower price, because there are economies of scale, in those larger projects from design, procurement, better utilization of equipment and personnel, etc..
This big choo-choo stuff isn't cheap. So I was only surprised that they'd thought it would be $250k in the first place. So who (among my potential business rivals, should they offer a contract for more competent advice in the future?) and what did they charge an hour to gave them that number?
There are two or three dozen of us just on this site (who are neither trolls, nor dreamy eyed foamers, or folks who last built one in 1963....) who worked for real RR's or have planned and/or engineered rail RR's, and could have told them this. You just add up engineering and design costs, materials, wages, equipment costs, overhead, and profit, from the vast volumes of currently available cost data on similar projects, and like magic......math works.
