Best of 2005 Awards

Arch Street Rail Yard and Shop

Award of Merit: Mass Transit

The Arch Street Rail Yard & Shop Maintenance Facility, completed this year in Queens for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, will service, maintain, commission, and store new M7 trains for the Long Island Rail Road.

But the $79 million project is also an integral part of a bigger construction program that will allow LIRR commuter trains to travel to Grand Central Terminal, relieving tight conditions at its only other terminus in Manhattan at Pennsylvania Station. That program, dubbed East Side Access project, underscored the complexity of linking the facility into the larger rail grid.

"It was an unbelievably complicated job," said one of our Best of 2005 judges.

Slattery Skanska of Whitestone, N.Y., with joint-venture partner Edwards and Kelcey of Morristown, N.J., started in July 2002 in what was the MTA's first use of the design-build construction strategy. They completed the yard in March.

The project entailed building:

• the maintenance shop
• a 26 kV-class traction power substation and building
• an engineering support building
• a 1,000-ft.-long train cleaning platform
• a storage building and utilities
• and nearly 4 mi. of trackwork.

All work took place around an active freight yard operated by the New York & Atlantic Railway. The 12-acre site had previously served as a rail freight yard and material transfer facility.

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The team excavated and disposed of approximately 60,000 cu. yd. of contaminated soil and drove 20,000 lin. ft. of H-piles into rock to lay the foundation for the facility, which uses 15,000 cu. yd. of concrete. It also constructed an underground utility network with 20,000 lin. ft. of water mains, sewer and gas lines, and duct banks.

The 60,000-sq.-ft., steel-frame train maintenance building has masonry and steel-panel walls and accommodates five tracks. The team procured, installed and commissioned the train-shop equipment, including platform elevator lifts, a gantry system to allow access to the rooftops of trains, and hydraulic-action folding doors measuring 16 ft. wide by 20 ft. high.

"It's a warehouse building with a lot of systems in it," one of the judges said.

Within the contract's required 810 days, the team built the facility largely from the outside in. It did not know the machinery specifications or power requirements when it was sizing the underground conduit, forcing it to install conduit and floor slabs after it had constructed the shell.

Key Players

Owner: Metropolitan Transportation Authority

General Contractor: Slattery Skanska

Designer: Edwards and Kelcey

Environmental Consultant: TRC Environmental

Architectural Consultant: Sowinski Sullivan Architects

Electrical: Egg Electric

Pile Driving: Underpinning and Foundations Skanska

Rebar Material: Harris Rebar Atlantic

Track Turnouts: Atlantic Track & Turnout

Building Plumber: WDF/Greene

Masonry: Job Opportunities for Women

HVAC-ATC-Sprinkler: Peco Inc.

Drywall: Duncan Interiors