(The following story by Stacie Hamel appeared on the Omaha World-Herald website on January 30.)
OMAHA, Neb. — Iraqi railroad officials are getting a close look at high-tech tools, which they might soon be using at home, during tours of Union Pacific and Amtrak operations in Omaha.
It’s only the tools they lack, not railroad knowledge, said their guide.
“They’re looking forward to being given the tools to do a job that they already know very well how to do,” said Gordon Mott, principal railway adviser for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. “They are first-class railway people.”
Six officials from the government-owned Iraqi Republic Railways Co. are touring before meeting Monday in Washington, D.C., with about 75 U.S. companies interested in selling equipment or services for reconstructing the railroad.
U.P. spokesman John Bromley said the group toured the railroad’s Harriman Dispatch Center on Thursday morning and would spend the rest of the day and part of today at the company’s downtown headquarters to talk with company officials. They arrived in Omaha early Thursday morning on Amtrak.
The Iraqi group spent three days in Chicago before taking Amtrak to Omaha. Their visit was coordinated by the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.
Visiting Union Pacific gives the Iraqi officials the opportunity to see equipment in use that they might purchase from other companies, said Dan Stein, the agency’s regional director for Eurasia.
Iraq’s railroad has been “cut off from state-of-the-art technology for 10 or 12 years,” Mott said, so the tour has been enlightening for the group.
“It’s new technology. It’s new management processing. It’s all different,” he said.
The combined effects of war and years of decline have left the country’s passenger and freight rail system in poor condition, he said.
“They were in decline before the first gulf war,” said Mott, who is retired from the CSX Railroad. “They’re now in the position of getting to rebound.”
Some lines are operating on Iraq’s rail system, Stein said from Washington, but track and equipment need to be repaired or replaced.
Supplemental funding targeted more than $200 million for rebuilding Iraq’s railroad.
“Their needs are probably much, much larger than that over the longer term,” Stein said.
So many businesses responded for Monday’s meeting that registrations had to be cut off, he said. They range from such large, widely known companies as General Electric and General Motors to “some smaller companies that you probably have never heard of before.”
Before returning to Iraq, the group also will meet with the Association of American Railways, the Federal Railroad Administration and government financial organizations.
“There’s such a high level of interest in meeting with them that they have almost no free time,” Stein said.