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 stabilising the sub-ballast of so much new track. They weighed the cost and performance of using geogrid, lime stabilisation, or cement stabilisation.

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