[donybrx]

Wow......Never thought I'd see this headline! I have years of memories of trackage being torn up with a vengeance everywhere...this is great news and none too soon....

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Posted on Mon, Nov. 13, 2006

A comeback for rail service
Crowded roads and ports are helping to fuel the resurgence.
By Tim Gulla
WILKES-BARRE CITIZENS' VOICE

WILKES-BARRE - Manufacturing companies across northeastern Pennsylvania are rediscovering rail service, and economic developers are laying track instead of ripping out what once was seen as only an artifact of the region's steam-powered past.

The reasons for rail's resurgence vary, from increasingly congested highways and rising fuel costs to the shift of manufacturers that use rail away from high-cost locations on the East Coast and logjams at ports of entry for international trade, local economic developers said.

Freight-car traffic has almost doubled this year from last year for the Luzerne County Redevelopment Authority, which owns about 66 miles of short-track rail serving 32 businesses, executive director Allen Bellas said. He said he expected about 2,500 freight cars on his rails this year, compared with about 1,300 last year.

At times, Offset Paperback saves up to $35 a ton by shipping carloads of paper stock from Canada by train instead of truck, said Joe Flaherty, manager of purchasing and inventory control.

The Dallas-based book printer is one of the heaviest users of freight rail in Luzerne County, receiving about 1,500 train cars of Canadian paper at a Laflin distribution center each year. It would take three tractor-trailers to move the load within each train car, Flaherty estimated.

Massive links of steel were key to attracting companies such as Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Coca-Cola Co. to business parks in the Hazleton area that could bring hundreds of new jobs, said Kevin O'Donnell, president of Hazleton Can Do.

That is why Can Do is laying 1,900 feet of track in Humboldt North in Hazle Township, specifically for Archer Daniels Midland's planned cocoa-processing plant.

About one of every five manufacturers inquiring about northeastern Pennsylvania says it needs rail access, said Jim Cummings, president of Penn's Northeast, an economic-marketing agency.

Now talk is growing even louder of the possibility of an intermodal freight-rail center in northeastern Pennsylvania - a place that could combine the best attributes of freight rail, warehousing and trucking to move large quantities of international products.

Cummings said he was recently contacted by a developer scouting possible locations.

The hottest area for rail development will be the Poconos, because of good access to both mainline rail and interstates, and because it has some of the largest tracts of buildable sites, said Larry Malski, chief operating officer of the Pocono Northeast Regional Rail Authority, which resulted from a merger of the Lackawanna and Monroe County rail authorities.

"It's very clear, 70 percent of the phone calls we're getting are from people moving out of New Jersey and New York metropolitan areas because of the high costs of taxes, utilities and land," he said. "They're finding the Poconos region, where we have land and sites, is where they want to be because they're out of the high-cost area."

Malski's agency is building track in Pocono Summit for Monadnock Non-Wovens, and in East Stroudsburg for Excel Storage Products.

"That's what really raises the eyebrows of the people who live here," Malski said, "when they hear new rail is being built."

Even in a region rich in railroad history and home to the Steamtown National Historic Site, economic developers say northeastern Pennsylvania does not have enough rail to meet the new demand.

Among the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business and Industry's five business parks, there are few undeveloped sites remaining with rail access.

Only five rail-served sites remain in the Crestwood Industrial Park in Wright Township. There are none in East Mountain, none in Hanover Crossings, and all of the rail sites in Hanover Industrial Park are occupied, said John Augustine, director of economic and entrepreneurial development at the Wilkes-Barre chamber.

"We have a region strewn with rail lines, but most were in urban areas that today don't meet the needs of growing companies," said Luzerne County Commissioner Todd Vonderheid, a former executive at the Wilkes-Barre chamber.

The situation is similar in the Scranton area. "We have right now probably two or three sites that we could put a rail user on," said Austin Burke, president of the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce.

The lack of rail-served sites has the Scranton chamber looking north toward Carbondale, where the Casey Highway has opened access to more land for industrial development with rail service, albeit at a higher cost.

"There's some rail sites up there that are brownfield sites that cost a decent amount to reclaim," Burke said. But the need for rail remains a priority, making reclamation a strong possibility

© 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.philly.com

[donybrx]

In the same vein or, rather, train of thought....:)
From the Times Leader:

"Locally built historic locomotive will be back on track (with photos)
Once restored, the engine will be part of a new visitors center in Wilkes-Barre."

Link to story/ & so-so photos:
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/16007482.htm

WILKES-BARRE – For years, the old diesel locomotive has aged without fanfare among other rusting train cars at the Market Street Square Complex.

But the Vulcan Iron Engine, which was crafted in 1942, was carried away from its bleak surroundings in downtown Wilkes-Barre on Monday to a shop in Duryea where it will be refurbished and prepared to hit the train tracks once again.

After the engine is painted in its original colors and fully restored, it is slated to pull cars in a scenic dinner train ride throughout the county, said former attorney and train enthusiast George Spohrer, who is overseeing the restoration of the 64-year-old engine.

“I’m in charge of this project, and by God, it’s going to run,” Spohrer said.

Spohrer said the engine was constructed in Wilkes-Barre by a Luzerne County-based company, Vulcan Iron Works, for the U.S. Army. It was sent to San Antonio and brought back to Wilkes-Barre in the 1960s by a private owner.

Idle for the last 20 years, it had served as a decoration next to a former restaurant and a now defunct nightclub. The vacated location has become a spot where vandals roam.

“Dials, controls, copper and batteries were stolen off it,” Spohrer said.

The diesel engine that is being restored is one of 51 made in Wilkes-Barre, said Spohrer. He said there are only three or four left in the country.

“The engine that we’re restoring is very historic,” he said.

Vulcan Iron Works had shops in Wilkes-Barre, Hanover Township and West Pittston from 1849 to 1954 and once employed 2,400 people, said the 80-year-old Spohrer.

Vulcan built 3,818 engines in the 1920s during its peak, according to Times Leader archives.

The locomotive recently became the property of the Luzerne County Redevelopment Authority when the authority purchased the complex on Market Street for $5.8 million from businessman Thom Greco. The authority plans to restore the train station at the site and transform it into a visitors center.

RMDI, a train restoration company, will renovate the engine over the next two years, Spohrer said. The total project will cost about $200,000. The redevelopment authority is forming a non-profit company, Vulcan Pride LTD, to fund the effort.

Spohrer said RMDI’s owner, Ron Delevan, agreed to remove the engine from the complex at Market Street for no extra charge. A 100-ton crane placed it on a flatbed tractor-trailer which took the engine away.

Spohrer, of Dallas, ran a tourist railroad with steam engines along the Susquehanna River in Plains Township from 1964 to 1972. The one-mile track circled his 20-acre property which also featured an ice skating pond and a station house.

[mglan80]

http://www.thebluecomet.com/dh7613mountaintop.jpg

Good to hear the need for more freight rail. Too bad the D & H didn't live long enough to see this. Bop bop ort.

[donybrx]

Rairload Freight also weighs in.....looks like the Poconos will inherit some of the action according to this.....and it's long overdue all in all..these highways of ours are out of room, out of control......a little balance from RR can help....

12/11/2006
Railroad freight service coming back to region
BY ROGER DUPUIS II
STAFF WRITER


MOUNT POCONO — Without trucks, America stops, or so says a motto popular among truckers. Still, the dominance of rubber-tired shipping hasn’t stopped an old competitor from making a comeback around Northeastern Pennsylvania.
That competitor is railroad freight service, which is slowly but steadily carving a new niche among industries here.

Just ask Keith Hayward, managing director of Monadnock Non-Wovens in Mount Pocono, where the impacts of a new railroad spur should contribute to the bottom line — and the firm’s employment roster — once the trains start rolling in.

His company turns polypropylene into rolls of fabric used to make filters for a wide range of products, from swimming pools to specialized face masks. Up to now, the raw material has been trucked in from Texas, one load every four days.

Starting Tuesday, a new rail spur next to the plant will be the delivery point for freight cars, each of which holds as much polypropylene as four tractor-trailers, and from which the plant can pump the material inside, at a more convenient pace.

“The point is, we can’t handle trucks coming in every four days,” Mr. Hayward said.

“The advantage to us is, that buying in bulk, you have significant savings,” he added. “Secondly, it’s obviously a lot less wear and tear on the local roads.”

Monadnock recently was awarded a $97,500 grant from the state Department of Transportation to build the spur, which links it to the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority’s 95-mile system, and the rest of North America’s railroad network. The company supplemented the grant with a $250,000 investment of its own in equipment needed to pump resin from the railcars.

Rail authority officials point to the addition of Monadnock as a shipper, and a new spur planned for Excel Storage Products in East Stroudsburg, as more evidence of the nexus between rail transportation and regional industrial development.

“I think it’s indicative of the renaissance of the railroad industry,” chief operating officer Larry Malski said. “It’s becoming a growth industry.”

At Excel, a $107,000 PennDOT grant will finance a 700-foot track extension, which will allow outbound shipments of steel products, each car carrying three or four truckloads worth of product at money-saving rates.

PNRRA is the successor of the Lackawanna County Railroad Authority and the Monroe County Railroad Authority, which merged earlier this year. The bi-county agency’s main focus is to market the region’s freight railroad resources and secure funding from state and federal sources for new infrastructure, like the Monadnock and Excel spurs, according to chairman Bob Hay.

The merger also was a requirement to further ongoing efforts to restore passenger train service between Scranton and New York City. Whatever becomes of the passenger train project — estimates are it won’t be completed until 2010, at the earliest — freight traffic is on the upswing.

Once home to the mighty Lackawanna Railroad and a major railway hub, the region’s freight haulage was down to a mere 500 carloads of goods per year two decades ago. Now, Mr. Malski said, traffic has grown to 7,500 carloads per year.

Monadnock’s contribution to that number will initially be one carload every 16 to 21 days, Mr. Hayward said, but with room on the siding for two cars at a time, he hopes ultimately to increase the deliveries, allowing production to be stepped up and doubling Monadnock’s business in two or three years.

That would mean adding seven workers to the 26-person staff in the coming months, and perhaps seven more later in 2007 or 2008.

“They (PNRRA) really have been a good advocate,” Mr. Hayward said.

Particularly in the Poconos, there’s room to grow, and companies seeking space and lower taxes than in other jurisdictions, such as nearby New Jersey, look poised to fuel the railroad renaissance. In Coolbaugh Township, for example, a new, 500-acre business park, Arcadia North, is being built on a greenfield site next to the PNRRA’s line.

Contact the writer: rdupuis@timesshamrock.com

[donybrx]

Bringing this forward for bucks native's perusal regarding rails in NEPA.