(The following story by David Hunter appeared on the Penn News website on June 9.)
INDIANA, Pa. — Though work on the track continues, coal trains won’t start rolling over the Buffalo & Pittsburgh Railroad’s Indiana branch until fall according to the railroad’s Senior Vice President Dave Collins.
“Things are progressing,” said Collins.
Collins said that, though work on the rail line is being steadily completed, trains wouldn’t be using it until September at the earliest.
B & P is planning to use the reactivated rail line to haul coal to the Homer City Generating Station from the Rosebud Mining Co. mine near Kittanning in neighboring Armstrong County.
Collins said that the coal train’s exact schedule has yet to be determined as the railroad is still discussing what the plant’s needs are with Edison Mission Energy of California, which owns the facility.
“It’s hard to make a firm commitment [on a schedule],” said Collins.
Scheduling for the B & P is made more complicated due to Norfolk & Southern coal trains bound for the Keystone Generating Station near Shelocta that run on the single-track rail line that runs from Punxsutawney to the village of Creekside.
South of Creekside, the 16 mile long Indiana branch runs to Homer City and passes through Indiana borough where the tracks cross a dozen streets in the space of a mile.
According to Indiana Interim Borough Manager William Sutton, B & P workers have been improving the grade crossings to make them easier for traffic to cross. Sutton said that work on the crossings is currently about 75 percent done.
“They have just a couple intersections to go,” Sutton said.
In a few weeks, borough road crews will begin painting warning marks on the street at the grade crossings, Sutton said.
Along the right of way through Indiana, piles of steel rail, railroad ties and equipment have been visible signs of work on the track for weeks. Workers have been replacing rotted ties and rusted rails with fresh members to support the weight of loaded 40 to 50 car coal trains, with each car weighing as much as 100 tons that pass over the rails.
As oil prices have reached record highs, the demand for coal as a fuel has rebounded. Collins said that he hopes the railroad can be a part of a stronger coal industry in western Pennsylvania.
“The coal industry has never really gone away,” Collins said. “We hope that it has a strong future in the area.”
During discussion of the line’s reactivation last fall, B & P opened the door to other local industries using the line. At the time, representatives of the Kovalchick Salvage Corp. said that the company was considering using the line to move salvage material away from the Kovalchick property on Wayne Avenue.
Collins said that thus far, nothing definite has been agreed upon between the company and the railroad, but that negotiations would likely become more serious as the line comes closer to being opened.
“There are no formal commitments yet,” Collins said.