Sinew and Steel : Workers Transform Union Station as Subway Takes Shape

Jim Rosewitz swung the sledgehammer in a graceful arc, bringing it down squarely on the head of the railroad spike.

“You gotta bounce it off the head of the spike,” he grunted between swings. “If you lift it each time, it’ll wear you out. That hammer can eat you alive.”

Rosewitz, 27, Manuel Lopez, 34, and Arnulfo Bustamonte, 30, were spiking down a switch on the platform tracks at Los Angeles’ Union Station last week, laboring on the project to transform part of the stately 50-year-old railroad depot into the eastern terminus of the city’s new 4.4-mile Metro Rail subway system.

They are among the hundreds of workers involved in the process of digging twin subway tunnels and a passenger stop beneath the station, building the access ways and other structures necessary to connect the old with the new. They are also burrowing a passageway under the Santa Ana Freeway so the subway trains can reach maintenance facilities being built along the banks of the Los Angeles River.

The subway tunnels at the depot are being dug as a great ditch that cuts diagonally across the old station’s railroad platforms and tracks. Rosewitz, Lopez and Bustamonte are part of the work force that is tearing the tracks up as the ditch goes through, then replacing them as the twin subway tubes are built and covered over--a process that enables the railroad to keep functioning while the subway is being built.

Much of the project involves the latest in technology, such as the lasers that are used to align the tunnels precisely and the 60-ton diesel tractors that can scoop up a truckload of dirt in one bite.

But Rosewitz, Lopez and Bustamonte still do their work the old-fashioned way.

Because the cramped spaces preclude the use of automated tracklayers, the three men wield tongs, crowbars and “spike maul” sledgehammers--the same tools used to build the first transcontinental railroad 130 years ago.

“It’s hard work,” Rosewitz said. “But what I do is track, and I like it. . . .

“I’ve been all over--Montana, Oregon, San Diego, Santa Barbara,” he said. “L.A.’s kind of crowded and noisy, but wherever they’re putting down track, that’s where I go. . . .

“At the end of each day, you know you’ve done a day’s work. You can look down and see what you’ve done, lying right there on the ground. That’s a nice feeling.”

A few yards away, in one of the slanted tunnels that passengers still use to reach the station platforms, Joegene Castillo and Hector Contreras were using a small jackhammer, called a “chipping gun,” to chisel an obsolete fuse box out of a concrete wall.

The tunnel was choked with dust and bits of fragmented concrete and the din was deafening, but Castillo, 52, and Contreras, 27, said they didn’t mind.

“This old station is a nice place,” Castillo said. “And we can walk across the road to Olvera Street to have lunch.”

George Rowe said he, too, likes the station, with its ornate, 52-foot ceilings, tile floors, landscaped courtyards and banks of leather waiting room chairs.

For him, the subway job has been a reunion of sorts.

Back in 1946, Rowe was a carpenter’s mate in the Navy, one of the thousands of servicemen who passed through Union Station on their way to, or from, some post-World War II military assignment.

Today, at 62, he is back at the station. This time he’s an engineer overseeing the ditch excavation process, which includes rebuilding of part of the Rapid Transit District’s new elevated busway extension--completed only a few weeks ago--that skirts the southern side of the station.

Contaminated Soil

Because of realignments made necessary by the discovery of a large deposit of contaminated soil, Rowe said, one of the tunnel passageways must now pass directly under two of the busway’s concrete support columns. These columns rest on steel pilings, which must now be removed and replaced by massive support beams that will bridge the new tunnel.

All this involves the movement of a lot of dirt. That’s where Jim King comes in.

King, a 50-year-old foreman, operates a 922 Cat Loader, one of the massive tractors used to scoop the dirt up and move it around, 12 cubic yards at a time.

As he demonstrated one afternoon last week, his tasks are varied.

First he loaded three-axle dump trucks. One scoop, one truckload.

Then he hauled dirt from one pile to another, leaving it where a big backhoe could use it to fill up a hole.

After that, King picked up some dirt being scraped from the ditch, threaded his way between a series of other earth-moving machines and deposited it precisely around the footings for the new support beams.

“He’s the best dirt operator around,” said utility operator Dick Sharrett, 32, who drives another of the tractors. “He becomes part of that machine. He does it right. Every time.”