STORM DESK (555) 047-2258 — answered by the duty driver, not a service, from the first flake to the final wheel report. Plants on 24-hour duty are never queued behind a phone call.
Storm event clear
$380per event
- Plant roads and one siding cleared to pavement
- Dock faces and leveler pits opened
- Treated salt on throats and shift-change walks
- Wheel report photographed and filed by 6 a.m.
- The same rate at 2 a.m. as at noon
Siding & road season
$2,640Nov – Apr
- Unlimited events at the one-inch trigger
- Type II brine before every named storm
- Switch points and heel blocks hand-cleared
- Stack rows built to the October map, hauled when they fill
- A February that buries the Junction changes nothing
Plant 24-hour duty
from $1,880per month
- Continuous cycle on the process road, storm-long
- Fire lanes and assembly points kept black
- Duty log initialed every four hours
- Emergency page answered by the driver holding the shovel
Why the trade is different
A siding is not a driveway with delusions
A driveway forgives. A switch point does not: one blade edge through a point machine is a four-figure repair and a stalled shunt, and a heel block left in a gauge line turns a fifteen-minute move into a Friday. Cold Switch clears rail by hand — points, heel blocks, gauge lines, heater cables checked while the crew is down there anyway — and saves the iron for the roads, where iron belongs. The liability maths is just as lopsided: your insurer reads “private trackage, not municipal right-of-way” and starts asking who exactly stands behind the duty log. This company is the answer to that question.
The duty log, initialed
Through every contracted event the duty driver initials the log every four hours: roads, points, docks, salt down, photographs. The log is the document your insurer and your shortline dispatcher both ask for, and it is written the night it happens, not the morning after.
How it goes
One storm, watch to wheel report
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
T-36 hours — the brine run
Type II down while it is dry
When the forecast firms, the tank truck runs the plant on dry pavement — corrosion-inhibited Type II on roads and aprons only, never on rail steel. Pre-treating after the snow starts is watering a plant in the rain, and on trackage it is worse than useless.
The trigger — one inch
The duty driver logs on
One inch on the process road starts the clock. Season yards get the first pass inside three hours; duty plants get a continuous cycle that does not wait for anything as passive as a trigger.
First pass — roads & fire lanes
Circulation before the shift change
The process road, the fire lanes and the assembly points go black first, because a shift change on an icy plant road is the most expensive fifteen minutes in the county. Dock faces follow before the first trailer drop.
The sidings — by hand
Points, heel blocks, heater cables
Two crew members walk each contracted siding with shovels, brooms and a curl of heater cable: points cleared to moving metal, heel blocks broken out, gauge lines broom-finished. No blade ever touches a point machine.
By morning — the wheel report
Time on, time off, salt, photos
Every address on the book gets its report before 6 a.m.: passes with timestamps, gallons of brine, tonnes of treated salt, one photograph per work face. The same file an adjuster would request in March, filed the night it happened.
The conveyor does not care that it snowed. Last February the sky dropped eleven inches on Ferrow Junction overnight and the offload was set for 6:40, and I stood at the window at four expecting to phone around. The Cold Switch loader was already on the process road — the duty driver had been cycling it since midnight — the points were broom-clean by half past five, and the trailer backed onto the dock face at 6:15. The wheel report was in my inbox before the coffee was. That is not a contractor. That is a piece of the plant.
Switch points & heel blocks
The work that built the company: points cleared to moving metal by hand, heel blocks broken and hauled, heater cables inspected on every visit, gauge lines broom-finished so the first move after a storm is a non-event. A stalled shunt costs more per hour than our whole season.
Dock faces & leveler pits
Trailer drops start at five on the Row, so the faces start at three: aprons to bare, leveler pits drained and open, dock seals uncut by any blade that ever wandered close. The approach throats get treated salt at the refreeze hours, logged like everything else.
Plant roads & fire lanes
The process road, the fire lanes, the assembly points and the tank-farm loop: continuous cycle on duty plants, three-hour first pass on season yards, stack rows built to the October map and hauled when the map runs out of room. The shift change never meets ice.
Storm events, 2025 — 26
The night roster
Six faces from the duty logs — iron where iron belongs, hands where hands belong, and a plant that opened on time behind every one of them.
Nine winters of duty logs
The book, in figures
Our shortline fined us twice for heel blocks left in a gauge line before we switched. Cold Switch has walked the same siding for six winters now, and the dispatcher’s inspector has gone from a menace to a coffee date. The hand-clear line on the invoice is the cheapest rail insurance in the county.
The dock seals were the argument — the previous operator’s blade cut two in one season at nine hundred dollars apiece. Cold Switch opens the faces with the loader held short and finishes by hand, and in three winters we have replaced zero. The wheel reports read better than our own shift logs.
I called at 1:50 in the morning during the February event because a fire inspector was coming at eight. The voice that answered was steering with one hand. The lanes, the assembly points and the tank-farm loop were black by six, and the log was initialed every four hours exactly as promised. My insurer asked for a copy of the format.
The four we always get
Asked across the duty desk
Anything heavier, the storm desk answers any hour weather is actually happening — or the form below reaches the same desk by morning.
Why can’t the municipality just clear us?
Because private trackage and plant roads are not their right-of-way, and their liability counsel knows it even where their plows could physically reach. The county clears to your mailbox; everything past the fence line — roads, sidings, docks, fire lanes — is yours to keep serviceable, and one stalled move or missed shift costs more than our season. That gap is the entire company.
Is brine safe around rail steel?
Not raw salt brine, no — chlorides and rail steel are old enemies. That is why our Type II is corrosion-inhibited and why it only ever touches roads, aprons and throats. Rail-side ice is a hand-and-broom problem by rule, and the switch heaters carry the overnight load. The duty log records which fluid went where, by the gallon.
What exactly is a wheel report?
The closeout every contracted event files before 6 a.m.: each pass with time on and time off, brine gallons, salt tonnage, and one photograph per work face. It is written for the two people who will eventually ask — your insurer in March and your dispatcher the morning after — and it has settled both kinds of conversation without a single meeting.
Do you take residential driveways?
No, and pretending otherwise would make us worse at the work that pays for the iron. A driveway is honestly served by the route contractors we drink coffee with at the Junction diner — ask the desk and we will name two.
Season yards are walked and mapped in October; the book closes when the duty drivers are spoken for · storm desk (555) 047-2258 · ops@coldswitch.example
Put the yard on the book
Gate address, roughly what sits inside it — road miles, sidings, dock faces — and when your shifts change. That is the whole quote; the October walk is free and the storm desk answers the first night you need it. ops@coldswitch.example