(The following story by Janet Nodar appeared on the Journal of Commerce website on February 25, 2009.)
Kansas City Southern Railway plans to re-open a long-closed 90-mile link southwest of Houston before July.
The line between Victoria and Rosenberg will shorten the Texas-Mexico route by 70 miles and enable KCS to avoid using more than 160 miles of heavily-congested Union Pacific track.
The dormant line formerly belonged to Southern Pacific, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle. Union Pacific acquired SP a decade ago. As a condition of that merger, KCS was granted the right to buy the old SP line.
In January Kansas City Southern opened the first phase of an intermodal shipper facility at Rosenberg. The facility consists of two 5,000-foot tracks with associated parking and loading/unloading facilities. Later phases might include up to six intermodal tracks totaling 45,000 feet, the railroad said.
CenterPoint Properties is expected to develop a distribution logistics park adjacent to the intermodal facility. As demand grows, the park may include several million square-feet of warehouse and distribution space. KCS spokesperson Doniele Kane said the railroad and CenterPoint are in the final stages of negotiations to locate a major consumer products company at Rosenberg. The company intends to develop a large regional distribution center.
Kansas City Southern is hoping to operate landbridge service for imports from Asia to the United States via Mexico’s Port of Lazaro Cardenas, according to the newspaper, avoiding Southern California ports and also the Port of Houston, which hopes to see an upswing in Asian imports after the Panama Canal expansion is completed in 2014.