Wash and Wear
Opening of RTD's Elati Maintenance Facility Expands Light Rail Infrastructure

Elati_TFP.jpg: Photo by Fred J. Fuhrmeister, Time Frame Photography

The official opening last month of the Regional Transportation District's LRT Elati Maintenance Facility will help to put the district's rail transit infrastructure back on track.

The $32 million, 128,000-sq-ft facility at Yale Avenue and Elati Street in Englewood will handle all of the daily maintenance operations for RTD's fast-growing fleet of light rail trains. When the T-REX light rail corridor opens in fall 2006, RTD's current fleet will increase from 31 light rail vehicles to around 80, far too many to be maintained by the district's older Mariposa facility, already operating over capacity. Mariposa will now be used for heavy repairs and as a system control center.

Before the completion of Elati on April 30, RTD had no light rail maintenance facilities along the south corridor.

"But Elati isn't just for T-REX and the southeast corridor trains," said Jerry Nery, RTD's light rail engineering manager. "It will provide the basic day-to-day services for all of our light rail cars. They need to be washed every time they come in, and we needed someplace secure to park them at the end of each day's run."

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Maintenance Operations

The Elati facility is located just east of the main southwest corridor light rail line, a half mile north of the Englewood City Center rail station. Many new ladder - or side - tracks allow trains to be parked overnight or driven directly into Elati's high-bay doors, which open on both the north and south sides for a speedy roll-in, roll-out flow.

The 110,000-sq-ft maintenance portion of the facility involves a drive-through trainwash, a sanding silo and pump station to replenish the sand tanks that trains use for emergency braking, a wheel-truing lathe bay and five maintenance pits with special equipment lifts.

Support areas include an electronics shop, parts storage area, 15,000 sq ft of administrative offices, dispatch and driver support areas, locker rooms, meeting rooms and a lunch room with mountain views for the mechanics and train operators.
The facility will employ around 150 workers to start, expanding to as many as 250 at full operation, Nery said.

"This is also one of the best-looking facilities of its kind in the nation," he added. "We looked at several while we were planning this one, including the big one in Salt Lake, and it's like night and day. Ours is much better. The facade looks more like a new recreation center or a school than a maintenance building."

The Elati building's exterior is a brick veneer with a metal panels and a translucent wall system near the top of the soaring 55-ft-tall roof. The offices are on the east side of the building, facing Elati Street.

The facility also features several elements intended to improve worker comfort and productivity, including an abundance of natural light, carefully designed interior and exterior lighting and concrete floors painted white to increase light reflectivity by as much as 60 percent. The massive HVAC system will maintain comfortable interior temperatures all year long, even with the frequent opening and closing of the large bay doors.

Design Elements

The Elati facility was designed by Denver's Maintenance Design Group with building architecture by RNL Design, also of Denver, and built by general contractor Mortenson.

During design, MDG worked closely with members of the T-REX team, which was responsible for the design of yard track, electrical system, controls, communication, site demolition, environmental cleanup and utility relocation.

The MDG team managed the building design, civil sitework and maintenance equipment specifications.

"We treated the different design groups as one team," said MDG Managing Principal Don Leidy. "The building people met regularly with the track engineers, maintenance experts and contractors, and we created a project Web site that contained up-to-date drawings and all communications. That really helped everyone know what was going on."

Initially, the site itself presented some problems. Half of the train yard and building is located in the City of Englewood; the other half in the City and County of Denver, creating some zoning and collaboration difficulties. Five different properties were consolidated to create the footprint.

In addition, the project team had to manage $2 million in demolition and cleanup of an old General Iron Works on the site and remove 80,000 cu yds of contaminated dirt.
The scrap steel was salvaged and sent to Pueblo for recycling.

Part of the design and planning intent was to move the facility itself as far north on the site as possible, leaving room on the south end for later transit development. RTD is partnering with the City of Englewood to create a future passenger station there (Bates Station) and open up commercial development opportunities near the station.

Construction Details

Mortenson not only oversaw all construction at the site, it also self-performed all of the 13,000 cu yds of concrete work and installed 44,000 cu yds of rock ballast and five miles of track. That included 43 turnouts to create the 17 ladder tracks in the yard.

"To our knowledge, this project constitutes the single biggest construction of a light rail maintenance facility in the U.S. done at one time," said Jason Miller, project manager for Mortenson. "The site itself is 22 acres. It involved much more than just building the building."

One of the toughest tasks was laying the track, which was shipped to the site from Pueblo in 80-ft pieces, then field-welded into place. Tracks crews started in the middle and worked their way outward on both ends. Track-laying and asphalt paving around the tracks was disrupted by the blizzard last March, which hit during the second day of asphalt operations and cost crews nearly six weeks out of their schedule.

Track infrastructure included the installation of 283 caisson foundations for the overhead catenary power lines, fastened by anchor bolts five ft long and weighing 150 lbs each. The last major equipment component to be installed was the 37,000-lb wheel truing machine in late March.

Mortenson started the project on Oct. 1, 2002 and completed it on time last month.

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