Norfolk Southern's project opens route to Midwest

By Jeff Sturgeon

BELSPRING

Three years of work to raise the roof - or lower the floor - in railroad tunnels came to fruition when two black locomotives pulling a load of colorful shipping containers emerged from the 3,302-foot Cowan Tunnel north of Radford.

Thursday marked the opening of the Heartland Corridor, an east-west rail route that shortens the transit time for cargo between the port of Hampton Roads and the Midwest. Norfolk Southern Corp., whose rearing white horse symbol adorns its black locomotives, built the corridor on its century-old route through Appalachian coal country.

Taxpayers and the railroad covered the corridor's $321 million cost. It is being heralded as an economic driver for Virginia, particularly the port of Hampton Roads, a way to

reduce truck traffic, a model of public-private sector cooperation and an engineering miracle.

"This is a great occasion," Wick Moorman, the Norfolk-based railroad's chairman, president and CEO, said at a trackside celebration. "It's been a mammoth undertaking."

By enlarging the tunnels, the railroad can run trains with containers stacked two high, doubling the route's capacity.

The route across southern West Virginia cuts the transit time for such double-stack trains to three days from four. In the past, double-stacked trains heading to and from the Midwest had to go through Pennsylvania or Tennessee to avoid the mountains and the cramped tunnels.

Engineers figured the railroad could get the tall trains through by enlarging tunnels, shortening the route.

In most places, it didn't take much. Crews raised tunnel clearances from a typical height of 19.5 feet from track to ceiling to 21 feet by lowering or centering track where possible, but they also used heavy machinery to knock out dirt and rock. In all, crews enlarged 28 tunnels in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky and removed 24 obstructions.

Clearance work came to $191 million. A rail yard for the Heartland Corridor in Columbus, Ohio, cost $70 million. A $60 million rail project in Hampton Roads also is considered part of the project.

Commonwealth Railway's line from Suffolk to Portsmouth was relocated from numerous neighborhoods and street crossings to the median of Interstate 664 and Route 164.

That part of the corridor has yet to open as state transportation officials work out an operating agreement with the railroad.

The federal government paid about $83.3 million for the tunnel work and $27.7 million for the Columbus terminal. Virginia paid $9 million for tunnels. Ohio chipped in $836,355. The railroad covered about $150 million, it said.

U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, said he supported the federal government's investment.

"You probably can't do anything better with infrastructure spending than making railroads more efficient," Goodlatte said.

Port officials in Hampton Roads expect the shorter route to help attract more cargo shipments, especially after a project to widen the Panama Canal is completed.

Norfolk Southern, which expects demand for freight rail service to nearly double by 2035, will run two or three trains in each direction each day.

After the railroad's guests sat down for a black-tablecloth lunch on Thursday, the train departed, heading for Columbus and Chicago.

The first train carried a mix of imported and domestic goods, said Michael McClellan, the railroad's vice president for intermodal and automotive marketing.

"They could be Christmas trees or wrapping paper or stereos or lots of clothing," he said.

Pilot business editor Chris Dinsmore contributed to this report.