Bucks company puts pedal to metal for Amtrak

Mike Mabin Sr. has worked on railroad equipment for four decades. He's never fulfilled an order like the one he received Thursday.

Following the crash of Amtrak Train 188, the agency needed two new catenary portal structures at Frankford Junction to get its Northeast Corridor service operational again. The tall steel structures hold the overhead wires above rail lines. Each one requires about 15 tons of metal. Typically, they take at least six weeks to create.

Amtrak asked Mabin if his company could build two in three days. "We'll do whatever you have to do," Mabin told them. "We eat and breathe this stuff."

Over the next 50 hours, employees of his Bucks County fabrication company, PennFab, would essentially drink it and bathe in it, too.

The story of how the two new structures were created and erected is a tale of speed and resilience. It's also just one part of a massive recovery effort that involved hundreds of workers on dozens of different projects: laying new track, rehanging wire, ensuring signals worked properly.

Like a jigsaw puzzle where every piece is handled by different personnel.

Ultimately, it worked: Amtrak announced Sunday that it would resume full Northeast Corridor service on Monday morning.

A glimpse into PennFab's process shows how much it took to put one puzzle piece together. Employees worked round the clock, napped in their cars, had food delivered from the restaurant of a worker's girlfriend, had six men doing the work of one to ensure they could get the job done in time.

Mabin said he always tries to avoid saying no to his clients. In this case, he didn't even view it as an option.

"We knew the corridor was down, [and] hundreds of thousands of people's livelihoods are on those trains," Mabin said Sunday, just a few yards from where the new structures were installed on the curve. "We literally didn't have a second to spare."

The race began around 2 p.m. Thursday.

Mabin, 64, met with Amtrak representatives at 30th Street Station, where they gave him and his team specifications for the structures, and told him they wanted to start running trains again by Monday.

The PennFab team drove back to the company's Bensalem branch, where designers jumped straight into drawing what is akin to a blueprint, a computerized model of the structure. One pole 85 feet high, another rising 60 feet. A 76-foot crossbeam in between.

Design alone can sometimes take two weeks, Mabin said. These structures were mapped out within eight hours. Amtrak approved them around midnight, Mabin said.

About three hours later, around 3:25 a.m. Friday, workers began processing the first piece of steel, said Mabin's son, Mike Mabin Jr., a vice president at PennFab.

By 4 a.m., employees had started the 12-hour process of welding the large poles.

Mabin Jr., 40, knew the effort would be taxing. At the Morrisville plant, where much of the big steel work took place, he gave workers a pep talk and regular reinforcement. "Only a few more hours," he'd say, like parents to their children in the midst of a lengthy car ride.

His father said most employees didn't need the push.

"We had to pry them out to get them to go home," he said.

Mabin Jr. told some to get bursts of rest in their cars. Food was delivered. People missed kids' baseball games and social events.

Still, "not one person said, 'I can't,' " said Steven Krotzer, a senior project manager.

By 6 p.m. Friday, welding was finished on the vertical poles. They were delivered to the crash site by 2 a.m. Saturday, Mabin Jr. said

By 9 a.m., he said, those poles were set in the ground.

About seven hours later, around 4 p.m., one of the structures was completely assembled. Amtrak workers were soon hanging wire on it.

Just 50 hours from the initial request. The other was finished by 6 p.m. "Technically, you shouldn't be able to do this," Mabin Sr. said.

"I wanted to get a clap going," joked his son.

Both men credited their tireless employees, about 50 people who viewed this type of event as their calling. Mabin Sr. also said that Amtrak was incredibly cooperative and that his company was well-positioned to deliver quickly, with speedy processes and a boatload of steel already on hand.

Still, he acknowledged, this project was unique. It was done so quickly, PennFab and Amtrak never actually agreed on a contract. They just jumped in on their word and good faith. They'll work out details - like payment - later, Mabin said.

In the end, he believed it was worth it. He knows the tragedy at Frankford Junction can't be undone.

But "what we can do," Mabin said, "is do everything we can to get it back up and operational."