Watco Expands Refugio Transload Terminal, Doubling SIT Yard Capacity

Photo courtesy of Watco.

Watco, a leading transportation service and logistics company, has announced the completion of a recent $6.7 million expansion and improvement project at its rail, storage and transloading facility near Refugio, Texas. The project at the Refugio Transload Terminal created increased railcar capacity resulting in a 600-car storage-in-transit (“SIT”) yard with heightened security.

“We’re helping our customers optimize the space at their facilities for producing product and we take away the burden of managing loaded and empty railcar storage,” said Marc Massoglia, Watco SVP – Terminals and Ports. “This is not an isolated opportunity. Watco can create SIT yards like this one at pretty much any of our short line railroads or any of the terminals and ports in our network.”

Watco’s Design and Development team managed the project adding 20,000 linear feet of track and more than 12,000 feet of perimeter fencing featuring state-of-the-art security equipment. The SIT yard provides a safe environment with 24/7 camera surveillance to monitor and protect customers’ railcars and commodities.

The 222-acre terminal is served by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Union Pacific railroads. The Refugio Transload Terminal offers eight 2,000-ton concrete silos on site with state-of-the-art conveyer systems for handling bulk commodities with the opportunity to transload from rail to silo to truck in any combination. The facility’s automatic truck transloading system can rapidly fill from multiple lanes to maximize the terminal’s truck throughput. While the SIT yard is composed of oil, gas and chemical cars, the terminal handles highway-rail transloading of wind energy components, sand and other aggregates, steel products and agriculture products.

Watco provides transportation, material handling and warehousing, logistics, railcar repair, and design and development for customers throughout North America and Australia.