A welder from the Rick Franklin Corporation slices through the scraps of a rail car on Friday morning in Chehalis. The construction company, based out of Lebanon, Ore., is tasked with the job of deconstructing over 400 train cars and expect to be working on the job until December.
Workers from Rick Franklin Corporation use heavy equipment to shred up rail cars for scrap metal in Chehalis on Friday morning. The construction company, based out of Lebanon, Ore., is tasked with the job of deconstructing over 400 train cars and expect to be working on the job until December.
Workers from Rick Franklin Corporation use heavy equipment to shred up rail cars for scrap metal in Chehalis on Friday morning. The construction company, based out of Lebanon, Ore., is tasked with the job of deconstructing over 400 train cars and expect to be working on the job until December.
Workers from Rick Franklin Corporation use heavy equipment to shred up rail cars for scrap metal in Chehalis on Friday morning.
Workers from Rick Franklin Corporation use heavy equipment to shred up rail cars for scrap metal in Chehalis on Friday morning.
Hundreds of rail cars once used to ship massive amounts of freight long distances are living their last days in Chehalis.
Workers from the Lebanon, Oregon-based Rick Franklin Corp. have been contracted to dismantle 420 intermodal rail cars owned by the Greenbrier Cos. of Lake Oswego, Oregon. Rick Franklin Corp. senior vice president Jared Cornell said Monday that crews will take the metal from the cars to Cascade Steel Rolling Mills in McMinnville, Oregon, where the scrap will be reused in other products.
Intermodal cars, as they are called in the railroad industry, are the ones that move shipping containers along railroad tracks. Cornell said he expected crews from Specialized Metals Recycling, a division of the Rick Franklin Corp., to be on site for “awhile.”
The work is taking place on a side track in the light industrial area between State Avenue and Market Boulevard, near Chehalis’ Old West Side neighborhood.
Cornell said workers are using two big pieces of equipment, one being a long-reach excavator with a magnet and the other, an excavator with a large shear, chewing and tearing through the cars until the job is complete.
“It looks like a giant claw and basically acts like a big pair of scissors to tear the cars apart,” Cornell explained.
Western Washington Railroad Co. is bringing 10 cars in per day for removal, Cornell said. The company scraps everything except for the wheels, which go to a Greenbrier shop in Tacoma, and the couplers, which will go to Illinois.
The Rick Franklin Corp. primarily serves railroads with a variety of services dealing with heavy equipment. The company also functions as an emergency response company in case of a washout or derailment, being called on to rebuild sections of railroad in a pinch.
Cornell said the work on the intermodal cars is being done in Chehalis because it eliminates the need to bring them to Lebanon, 70 miles south of Portland, and then back to McMinnville, 60 miles northwest of their home base.
“We tend to do it from our home site in Lebanon, but it wouldn’t make sense to bring them down here and bring them back to McMinnville,” Cornell said.
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Christopher Brewer: (360) 807-8235
