(The following story by Pat Forgey appeared on the Long Beach Press-Telegram website on January 15.)
LONGVIEW, Wash. — The Port of Longview this month is taking deliveries from its first 100-car “unit trains,” marking the true completion of one of the area’s most ambitious economic development projects in recent years.
The trains are using the port’s new industrial rail corridor, a 10-year, $21 million undertaking that links the port to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe main lines that avoids all road crossings.
Port officials dedicated the rail line in November, but the last siding wasn’t completed until Jan. 4, said port facilities and engineering manager Norm Krehbiel.
“We got it done just in time” to handle scheduled unit trains, he said.
Unit trains carry the same commodity in every car, all bound for the same destination, preventing costly and time-consuming switching.
Union Pacific railroad this week began shipping soda ash to Longview for export. Before the port built the rail corridor, it couldn’t have handled unit trains because of the delays they would cause at three road crossings on the old lines to the port.
With opening of the rail corridor, the port is expecting January to be its busiest month in 10 years. Eighteen vessels are expected to call, including some that will carry soda ash to Korea, Bolivia, Japan, Indonesia and New Zealand, port officials said.
“We’re just going to be inundated with soda ash this month,” said Doug Avert, the port’s terminal manager.
Soda ash is used for the production of glass, chemicals, detergents and industrial products. Kinder-Morgan Terminals is loading the product on to freighters
The industrial rail corridor will boost the capacity of the port to handle even more cargo, said Gary Lindstrom, the port’s marketing manager.
“A lot more is coming down the tracks, so to speak,” he said.
Kinder-Morgan officials agreed.
“The operational efficiency that the rail corridor provides will improve bulk cargo opportunities at the Port of Longview,” said Kevin Jones, northwest regional manager for Kinder-Morgan. The storage capability will also help entice customers to the port, he said.
Not only can the Port of Longview handle trains with 100 or more cars at a time, new sidings mean that it can handle more than one such train at a time,
“We anticipate that the rail corridor will generate increased efficiency in moving a variety of cargo for our customers, saving them money and generating jobs for the local economy,” said Avert, the port’s terminal manager.
The port ran a few test trains on the new track before the soda ash began to arrive, but Avert said everything has been going extremely well on the new rails.
“So far, so great,” he said.
Port marketing director Gary Lindstrom said the new rail corridor will help the port sell itself as both a port and its rail-accessible industrial park.
“We’ve got a good product, and good service here to sell,” he said.