Replaced in Hammond Norfolk Southern No.
Classic PRR Signals 8447 thunders
underneath the former Pennsylvania Railroad position light signals guarding CP 506 on the Chicago Line at Hammond, Ind., on July 5, 2015. The signals were taken out of service the next day as part of a replacement program to prepare for Positive Train Control. The changeover eliminates one of the last ex-PRR signal bridges on the east side of the NS greater Chicago Terminal area.
PHOTO BY PAUL BURGESS
maintenance crews busy as they strug- gled to keep the railroad open during the events. While some delays were report- ed, the overall impact to KCS wasn’t as significant as those experienced by oth- er area railroads, and KCS hosted some detour trains from Union Pacific and BNSF during that period. .
NORFOLK SOUTHERN SCOTT LINDSEY
NS Honors Moorman
Norfolk Southern has named its Bel- levue, Ohio, classification yard after Charles W. “Wick” Moorman in recogni- tion of his leadership at NS and support of its investors, customers, and employ- ees. Moorman retired June 1, 2015, as chief executive officer and has assumed duties as executive chairman of the cor- poration’s Board of Directors. In making the announcement, NS President and CEO Jim Squires said, “This is timely and well-deserved rec- ognition for a railroader who thinks big, who thinks long-term, and who does the right things in the right ways,” Squires said. Moorman Yard is the largest rail yard on the NS system after the recent completion of $160 million in improve- ments that doubled its size.
Intermodal Terminal Expansions
Expansion work is underway at NS’s Austell, Ga., intermodal terminal, locat- ed west of downtown Atlanta along the mainline towards Chattanooga and the Midwest. Two new tracks are being built along the northeast side of the four ex-
10 SEPTEMBER 2015 •
RAILFAN.COM
isting ramp tracks. Austell is the south- ern terminus for Chicago-Atlanta Trains 215/216 and Kansas City-Atlanta Trains 223/224. It also receives and originates Chicago traffic on Trains 295/282 (Chi- cago-Jacksonville), and from Savannah on Train 231. In addition, Austell is the Atlanta terminal for NS’s “Blue Streak” service to Los Angeles on Union Pacific run-through Train 226 via Shreveport, La., and counterpart 225. Thus, it is crit- ical for NS intermodal operations in the Southeast to keep Austell ahead of the demand curve.
In Ohio, a $34 million expansion proj- ect has been announced for the Rick- enbacker Intermodal Terminal on the south side of Columbus, located along NS’s “Heartland Corridor” route to the Port of Norfolk. The company desires to expand capacity by 40 percent, and NS has applied for a $17 million federal TIGER grant to match its own $17 mil- lion investment in the proposed project, which would lengthen tracks, add trailer parking spots, and add a crane. Rick- enbacker now supports 210,000 lifts a year, and the expansion would push the capacity to 300,000 a year.
The Rickenbacker facility was built in 2008 with an eye to eventually expand to about 400,000 lifts a year. In its TI- GER application, NS cited central Ohio’s robust logistics and warehousing sector, along with major companies such as Cardinal Health, UPS, Defense Supply Center Columbus, American Showa, and L Brands, as reasons for the hub’s swell- ing traffic. NS hopes to have the addi- tional capacity in place by 2018. Further east along the former N&W mainline, Cincinnati-based Parsec Inc. has been tapped to manage the Heart- land Intermodal Gateway Facility now under construction at Prichard,
W.Va.
The facility is scheduled to open in De- cember. Parsec already operates sever- al NS intermodal terminals, including Rickenbacker in Columbus.
Skyland Plant Closure Announced
Yet another coal-fired power plant
supported by NS unit coal trains has been selected for closure. Duke Energy recently announced plans close its 51-year-old Skyland facility, located south of Asheville, N.C., along the former Southern’s Saluda route from Spartanburg, S.C. Duke will replace the two-unit, 376-megawatt coal-fired units at Skyland with a natural-gas fueled facility to be built near the existing plant. The current estimate for closure of the coal-fired boilers and activation of the new natural gas units is late 2019 or early 2020.
The final several miles of Skyland unit train deliveries are via the Blue Ridge Southern
Railway, a Watco
subsidiary that acquired the Asheville- Hendersonville portion of the Saluda route last year from NS. According to Duke Energy, Skyland burns about 700,000 tons of coal each year or around 6300 rail cars. As of July, Duke Energy had one 100-car set of PGNX hoppers assigned to Skyland deliveries, with the occasional addition of a second train. Most recently, Skyland’s coal has been sourced from mines at Bailey, Pa., and the Big Sandy River barge terminal at Cyrus, W. Va. Skyland trains usually are designated as 784 loaded and 785 empty, with routing to Asheville via Williamson and Iaeger,
W.Va.; Norton and Frisco, Va.; and Bulls Gap, Tenn.
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