68 Business View Magazine - May 2016
a lot of its customers come via its relationship with
the Class 1, BNSF Railway, and through word-of-mouth
from other clients. Interchange is provided with the
BNSF at Robinson Spur which drops off cars two days
a week with additional days as needed for unit trains.
“We are totally full, right now,” Martelle reports. “We
have all 2,500 rail spots full and have a waiting list of
over 2,700 rail cars.” But Martelle adds that there’s
still a lot of work to do even with the yard operating at
full capacity. “We’ve got close to 2,000 acres that we
have to maintain and we’ve got over 72 miles of rail
and right-of-way that we have to keep clear, clean, and
safe. We’re also delivering cars to the two clean and
repair facilities that are both tenants of RVPR, and that
have a combined total of roughly 50 employees. So,
we have some cars coming and going. Even though
the railroad operates with only ten employees, it is still
able to provide effective service to our tenants and
customers.”
The two tenants to which Martelle refers are Rescar
and TLC Rail Services. Rescar provides railcar repair,
interior coating repair, railcar cleaning, testing and in-
spection, billing, and NDT (non-destructive testing) ser-
vices. TLC Rail Services provides railcar-to-truck trans-
loading, on-site mobile cleaning, blasting, and running
inspections and repairs. “It was strictly started as a
storage yard for rail cars,” Martelle explains, referring
to the company’s genesis. “And it gradually evolved. It
started with one cleaning and repair facility, and then,
in the last year, we’ve added another.”
While there are other railcar storage facilities in the
region, Martelle says to her knowledge there are none
that can hold as many cars as RVPR, nor accommo-
