My Peddinghaus Story - PennFab, Inc. - Bensalem, PA

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On May 12th 2015, Amtrak's Northeast Regional train from Washington D.C. to New York City derailed on the Northeast Corridor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The disaster left 8 dead, 200 injured and millions of Americans without their daily Amtrak service. This "My Peddinghaus Story" takes you to Bensalem, Pennsylvania, just minutes away from the disaster. With their Peddinghaus equipment, PennFab worked tirelessly to process the catenary structures needed for Amtrak to restore service. Discover how PennFab produced what would typically take 14-16 weeks in a mere 36 hours.

In 1983, I started PennFab for $2,500.

My wife, three kids, didn't have any money, but had the strong desire to build a business that I could be proud of, that my family could be employed at, and we could employ a lot of good people.

We started small.

We build everything that they have on the railroad from rail bridge structures to catenary structures to we built rail stations, as well.

So we first found out about this train derailment, this horrific accident down in Philly. We got a call and my dad basically said, whatever you need, we're available 24/7 to you guys.

Our whole facility is dedicated to whatever you need.

It normally would take us about seven days to do this on an emergency basis. We did it in 36 hours, not only the design, the detail, fabricate, weld, assemble, ship.

We finished the assembly in the field and we directed the erection.

The second a piece came off the machinery, if we could bolt it up or weld it or drill it, it was getting done.

And all this, at the same time, we had programs for our plate processor.

And that was doing the base plates and all the gussets and web stiffeners.

So pretty much all of the machinery--at first it was the drill line, then the Anglemaster, and then the plate processor.

And then they're all running just full speed until the whole job was done.

And guys were pretty much on standby, which was the nice thing about it. I guess because of the event and because there were deaths and this is such a huge thing, the guys were really honored to be a part of that.

So there was no asking or telling people they had to work and stay late. It was, what can I do because I want to be part of getting this back in service.

It was an honor to be involved.

We did two structures for the derailment. And at a glance, you could look at them and say, oh, they're the same, it's two vertical columns with a crawlspace in between.

But the size of it, the overall height of it, the distance between the foundations and the tracks, are completely different.

The plate processor's equipped with the outfeed conveyor. The drill line is equipped with a multmaster, which we use constantly.

The one thing that I would say that was really impressive with the equipment overall, and in regards to this Amtrak project that we had as well, was that we had pieces of material that were coming off three different machines. You had different operators running them.

Everything came in, came together, and fit up perfectly. And that was one thing that impressed us.

When we were fitting things up in the shop, and we went out in the field and saw everything come together in the field, no holes needed to be reamed out and everything fit into place.

And there was a sigh of relief, I know from myself, and I'm sure from Mike and some other people that everything fit together really well.

Without the Peddinghaus machines, it would've been impossible for us to get this job done as quick as we got it done.

And, again, we couldn't be happier with the machines provided by Peddinghaus and the service that you guys provide.

It does, I mean, there should be more companies like Peddinghaus and PennFab.

We're going to bring manufacturing back to America.