HUTCHINSON, Kan. — It’s not something you see every day and, unless you’re up late at night, you probably won’t 
see it in action.
An unusual train was parked at the Union Pacific depot Friday. It’s called a rail grinder. Loram Company operates the train, and several others like it all through the US. Union Pacific Spokesperson Mark Davis says the train provides an important maintenance service by keeping the train tracks a certain shape. That makes the rail last almost twice as long and also saves the railroad millions of dollars in fuel use by lowering the amount of friction the train encounters on the rail. When you spend $4.1 billion a year on track replacement and maintenance, you can see why the machine is important to the railroad.
The train is unique with locomotives at each end and is loaded with computer equipment that monitors all of the train’s operations. The task is simple. Five cars with 20 grinding wheels pass over the track reshaping the head of the rail. The train passes over the tracks at about 20 miles per hour. The grinding stones must be replaced two to three times per night, and it takes the entire crew about 30-45 minutes to change the 100 stones that weigh about 25 pounds each. As you can imagine, the train creates quite a light show with the large shower of sparks during the grinding process, so the train is heavily armed with water cannons and other fire suppression systems. Two 50,000 gallon tank cars provide water. The employees for Loram work long hours with the grinding crew working at night while train traffic is low, and a second crew does maintenance during the day.
Crews are on the road six weeks at a time before getting two weeks off and the trains run nearly year round, going from one job to the next.