Watco Completes Expansion of Refugio Transload Terminal

Watco's 222-acre Refugio Transload Terminal is served by BNSF Railway and UP.

Watco on Nov. 1 announced the completion of a recent $6.7 million expansion and improvement project at its Refugio, Tex.-based rail, storage and transloading facility, which has “created increased railcar capacity resulting in a 600-car storage-in-transit (SIT) yard with heightened security,” the company said in a press release.

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, Watco says, “provides a save environment with 24/7 camera surveillance to monitor and protect customers’ railcars and commodities.”

The 222-acre Refugio Transload Terminal, which is served by BNSF Railway and Union Pacific (UP), offers 550 railcar spots, as well as eight 2,000-ton concrete silos on-site conveyor systems for handling bulk commodities with the opportunity to transload from rail to silo to truck in any combination, Watco said. The facility’s automatic truck transloading system “can rapidly fill from multiple lanes to maximize the terminal’s truck throughput,” the company said, adding that while the SIT yard is comprised 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.

“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 Watco Senior Vice President of Terminals and Ports Marc Massoglia. “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.”