Market demands have created opportunities in the domestic crude oil and petroleum industry to deliver and off-load large volumes of products by rail unit trains. This opportunity is dependent on the industry’s ability to reconfigure existing plant rail systems at their tank farms and refinery sites to handle such large unit shipments. STV completed a conceptual design and supported the preliminary engineering design to upgrade one such refinery site to support bulk rail services capable of unloading 118-car unit trains of crude oil daily. A significant part of STV’s work involved developing a practical railroad operating plan with the host railroad that would support its ability to deliver unit trains to the facility, unload them, and exit the facility with the empty cars routed back to the originating location.