Cxt Wins $7.2 Million Railroad Tie Contract

CXT Inc. has won a $7.2 million contract to manufacture railroad ties for rail improvements at the Port of Los Angeles.

The Spokane-based manufacturer will produce more than 96,000 concrete cross ties and 25 sets of special ties for turnouts, according to an agreement with the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners.

“We are very excited to have been awarded this contract …,” John White, CXT’s president and chief executive officer, said in a news release Tuesday. “… It’s just one more example of how Spokane-made concrete products can be found all over the United States.”

CXT has subcontracted L.B. Foster Co. - a Pittsburgh manufacturer of rail construction products - to manufacture all of the switch and cross ties for five projects at the Port of Los Angeles. Among those projects is development of the port’s ondock rail interchange station at the American President Lines Container Terminal, which will be the largest facility of its kind in the nation.

White said CXT’s 130 employees will spend 10 months manufacturing the ties at its Spokane plant.

CXT, along with its predecessor Canadian and United Kingdom companies, has been making concrete ties in large stationary plants in North America since 1974.

When the company became employee-owned in 1990, CXT developed a strategy of product and geographic diversification.

While CXT’s core business consists of track and turnout ties for railroads and transits, CXT also has an interlocking paver division and an environmental concreteproducts division, which produces pre-assembled concrete buildings.

More recently, in association with Concrete Railroad Materials Inc. of Nevada, CXT developed a transportable concrete tie manufacturing plant in order to help open markets for the Spokane company in the southern United States and on the East Coast.

, DataTimes