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From the break of dawn to the twilight hours, trains click and clack along the track from New Jersey to the Big Apple. This rail fleet is cleaned, maintained, and repaired at Meadows Maintenance Complex, located about five miles outside New York City in Kearny, N.J.
To meet the increased demand for service into New York and extend service into outlying areas, the transit department is expanding the capacity of the maintenance facility to handle 300 additional passenger cars. The existing 500,000-square-foot facility services more than 800 locomotives and passenger cars each year.
The New Jersey Transit Authority launched the $68 million expansion project in September 2003. It hired E.E. Cruz and Co., a Homedale, N.J.-based general contracting firm, to add on to the three 20-year-old masonry block and steel buildings and construct a bi-directional train wash facility, a mechanical support building, and two facilities for cleaning and servicing the locomotives.
"This is the main service facility for the trains,...