Railroad lists upgrades in a pitch for customers

Improvements by Pan Am Southern to the rail route from Mechanicville, N.Y., to Ayer, Mass., in the last year have increased capacity and speeds on the line and have the company looking at further opportunities in New England, including the Fitchburg area, the Worcester Telegram reports.

Norfolk Southern
transferred $140 million in cash and property to a joint venture with Pan Am
Railways to improve the 155-mile rail route referred to as the Patriot
Corridor.  The project – approved
one year ago – includes $87.5 million spent over three years on capital
improvements, including terminal expansions and track and signal upgrades, said
Rudy Husband, director of public relations for Norfolk Southern.

Husband met with members
of the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce interested in learning
how the improvements will affect the area and what opportunities will arise for
area businesses

"We are getting people to
think about opportunities in the Route 2 corridor and beginning a dialogue with
economic specialists and shippers doing business in that area to take a look at
what we are doing to develop more business for Pan Am Southern to maximize our
opportunities not only in Massachusetts, but throughout New England," said Husband.

Richard E. Quinlan,
member services and special projects manager for the chamber, said area
businesses are very interested in the project.

"We’re extremely excited
about what is coming," said Mr. Quinlan. "It’s an opportunity for businesses to
come to the area and utilize the freight system with better efficiency than it
had, and in a lot of cases, less expensively. The bottom line is, we see
expanded transportation capacities for goods around the country in large quantities
and that is one of the things we are able to use to promote new businesses to
come in."

Husband said in the past
year significant upgrades to the railway have been made including replacing
about 71 miles of rail between Fitchburg and Mechanicville, and installing
123,000 crossties and improving rail bed gravel the entire length of the rail.

"As a consequence of all
of that work, we were able to restore speeds of a maximum of 40 miles per hour
and 30 miles per hour on curves," he said.  He said speed restrictions based on former track conditions
were 10 to 25 miles per hour.

"A trip from Deerfield to
Mechanicville, for example, would take a whole day," he said. "Now we can take
a train and pick up cars and bring them back all in a 12-hour shift."

Weight capacities on the
railway will also be increased from 263,000 to 286,000 pounds.

In addition to track
work, an $8-million intermodal terminal opened in Ayer, and two new trains
between Chicago and Ayer were added, he said.

"Work will continue into
2010 on the track, bridges and signals," he said. "We’re also constructing a
$40-million joint intermodal automotive terminal combination in Mechanicville."