BNSF Logistics Center

BNSF is building a new industrial logistics center in Cleveland, Texas. Roughly eight miles of new rail is being laid to service new manufacturing facilities that will be moving into the developed land. BNSF and Ames had a choice to make regarding how they would go about stabilizing the subballast of so much new track. They weighed the cost and performance of using geogrid, lime stabilization, or cement stabilization.

Tensar engineers provided BNSF and Ames a design using Tensar NXR1 Geogrid underneath the subballast. While aggregate is often considered an additional cost that comes with the use of geogrid when compared with lime or cement stabilization, in rail applications the subballast and ballast is going to be included in the design regardless of which product or process is used to stabilize the aggregate. This makes geogrid the most cost-effective stabilization method when it can be placed directly underneath the subballast. And on this project, it saved an estimated minimum $750,000.