(The following appeared on the Meridian Star website on February 14.)
MERIDIAN, Miss. — Meridian was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal Wednesday in an article, “New Era Dawns for Rail Building,” about big changes being made in the railroad industry.
For years, said the article, rather than expanding, railroads were shrinking their lines. But in recent years, freight lines like Norfolk Southern and Kansas City Southern have been creating larger, more efficient lines in an effort to compete with trucking lines that have been hurting from the rising cost of fuel.
The article talks of rough patches of track near Meridian that slowed trains down to a snail-like pace, now being replaced by a track called the “Meridian Speedway,” running from Meridian to Laredo, Texas, which allows trains to move at the rate of interstate traffic.
The railroad industry is looking up, says the article, and in a railroad town, that’s good news.
The article, titled New Era Dawns for Rail Building, can be viewed at online.wsj.com.
(BLET Editor’s Note: The article also appeared here on the BLET website yesterday.)