Advanced Rail Concepts was awarded an advanced Innovator of the Year award by Seattle Business Magazine. See Article
“I’ve been working on the railroad” no longer means gangs of workers pounding spikes and lifting rails. Much of the work is now mechanized, but you can’t just take any piece of construction equipment and put it to work. Aside from the matter of the rails interfering with the bottom of the equipment, maintenance-of-way workers often handle tasks like clearing brush below the level of the roadbed, which poses tipping hazards.
Advanced Rail Concepts, formed by Wendell Malmberg and Rick Johnson, has been developing versatile machines specifically designed for tasks ranging from cleaning culverts to stacking, loading and installing rails and ties, and spreading ballast. Its RailX products aren’t “rail bound,” meaning they can run on rails or move onto or off the tracks quickly at most locations (thus reducing fuel consumption, the company says). A retractable rail-wheel undercarriage allows a standard Caterpillar-style machine to run along the rails, while the conventional Caterpillar treads are raised clear of the ground. To go with the design of the machine itself, the company has come up with the Roto Gripp Bucket, an easily attached, 360-degree rotating head that allows one machine to replace multiple pieces of older maintenance equipment and accomplish multiple tasks, including cleaning ditches and removing trees.
Advanced Rail Concepts has five sizes of retrofit machines, all made in Washington, and it’s now developing a machine for rebuilding and maintaining trestles while keeping workers safe.
