Gardendale Rail — Eagle Ford Shale News

Eagle Ford railroad traffic is on the rise. Operators are moving crude past pipeline bottlenecks, and moving frack sand and other products in to continue development.

The Hondo Railway, 30 miles west of San Antonio, serviced about 1,500 railcars per year on 13,000 ft of track a few years ago. The Railway terminal now serves 15,000 railcars per year and has expanded to 80,000 ft of track.

This year, an estimated 15,000 railcars will move through Hondo Railway LLC's 175-acre property — many of them carrying fracking sand bound for drilling operations in the Eagle Ford Shale formation.

The Hondo Railway isn't alone either:

What started at 1,600 feet of track has grown to 130,000 feet of track. Gardendale Railroad moves a mix of oil field commodities.
“The root of everything is sand,” Cundiff said. “We hadn't had any activity there in 15 years. We've gone from that beginning to 25 miles (of track) in just under 24 months.”
And at Port San Antonio, the East Kelly Railport is adding 15,000 feet of track to the existing 20,000 feet of track.
Spokesman Paco Felici said the rail port went from moving 2,594 railcars in the 2010 fiscal year to 4,556 railcars in the 2011 fiscal year.

The Port of Corpus Christi's rail expansion shouldn't be forgotten either. The port is adding the capacity to handle 100,000 railcars per year.

Read more at mysa.com

South Texas rail traffic is on the rise. Some of the traffic is directly related to growth in the Eagle Ford and some is related to economic growth across the board.

The Port of San Antonio's East Kelly Railport is set for an expansion this year. Watco is expanding to occupy 20 acres of the 350 acre railport and will nearly double the amount of track it has in place from 20,000 ft to more than 35,000 ft. The development is in response to growth from serving a little more than 2,600 railcars in 2010 to more than 4,500 in 2011.

San Antonio isn't alone either. The Gardendale railroad was almost abandoned a few short years ago, but now the interchange has five switching engines running.

Frack sand silos rise above the yard and black tank cars hauling Eagle Ford crude stand ready for transport. Adjacent to the interchange, you'll see several loads of pipe waiting to be put to work. There's no doubt who is driving growth in Gardendale. It's all oil & gas.

There's enough activity that Ironhorse Resources, operator of the Gardendale Railroad, has added around 80,000 ft of track and has expansion plans that will cover more than 350 acres. The facility is built to handle 15,000 railcars per year, but that number will stretch well above 20,000 as expansions are completed.

You can read in regards to Ironhorse's facility at gardendalerail.com