(The Virginian-Pilot posted the following article by Carolyn Shapiro on its website on March 2.)
NORFOLK, Va. — It’s all about gravity.
From the yard at Lamberts Point terminal, gravity carries the rail cars down a shallow incline toward the water where ships wait. They lumber toward the pier like circus elephants on their way to the big top.
No high-tech mechanisms. Not even a locomotive engine. Just the momentum of a downward roll.
The movement of coal from land to sea at Norfolk Southern Corp. s terminal at Lamberts Point has changed little in 40 years.
One change is apparent to those watching the railroad s bottom line — and those working on the yard for the past decade: Lamberts Point coal volume has followed the same slow descent as the rail cars that carry it.
A once-bustling business that helped propel the port of Hampton Roads through the 20th century, the coal industry has been curbed mostly by foreign competition. Nonetheless, it has remained the local port’s No. 1 commodity, moving through Lamberts Point as well as two operations in Newport News.
Norfolk Southern has balanced the loss against its fastgrowing sectors, such as intermodal and automotive transport. But the slide has swept away jobs in the yard and in related industries in Hampton Roads.
The amount of coal dumped for shipment from Lamberts Point dropped to 9.9 million tons last year — a mere quarter of the terminal’s peak volume in 1990. That year, dumpings reached 39.5 million tons.
Since then, it has steadily declined, with occasional bumps.
In 2002, the slump gained speed, as the annual coal volume dropped 31 percent. It was the sharpest decline in 20 years, and the first time in 24 years that dumpings fell below 10 million tons.
Employment at the terminal has shrunk, too. At the business’s peak around 1990, Lamberts Point employed 1,100 to 1,200 people. About three years ago, the work force numbered 720. Now the operation has about 450 workers. In years past, the pier never stood empty, workers said. Vessels lined up in the harbor for a turn at the coal loaders.
“Ships used to be in Hampton Roads waiting fora berth,” said Terry W. Bruce, the terminal s senior piermaster since the mid-1980s. “Now the pier is waiting for ships.”
Ships arrive sporadically — 22 a month, Bruce estimated, down from 30 or 40 in the heyday. It’s just-in-time delivery. If the coal arrives late, the ships wait. If the ships get delayed by weather at sea, the coal sits and ties up rail cars.
One recent Friday morning, two ships sat at Pier 6 in Lamberts Point, absorbing coal into their deep holds for transport to Algeria and Brazil. They arrived the day before but waited for coal cars delayed by snow in the mountains. The cars traveled from mines 350 to 500 miles away, mostly in western Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. Most of the coal leaving Lamberts Point goes to steel mills overseas to fire their furnaces.
Shiny chunks of coal, piled in rail cars like black loaves of bread risen in baking pans, wound through the 476-acre yard and its massive tangle of track. In the barney yard, hump crews arranged the cars in the correct order for dumping. “Hump” refers to an elevated spot ona rail yard that allows for gravity to take over.
Kenny Barden, a chief clerk who was working as a cargo coordinator, monitored the passage of the cars over three tracks. Outside his window, the cars rolled at about 4 mph over electronic scales.
Barden has worked for Norfolk Southern for 28 years — the fourth generation of his family in the railroad business.
In the past, four to six workers packed into the small cargo coordinator’s room, he said.
That s when the terminal ran two sides of track into the pier. These days, only half of the barney yard is operating most of the time, with the other half an expanse of barren track.
Norfolk Southern manages the specific blend of coal that an importer wants, amixture of three classes of the product — based on its content of ash, moisture and heating ability. The weight shows if the blend is right.
“It keeps you on your toes, this job,” said Barden, who has done everything from shoveling the excess coal that spills off the conveyor belts to working the bridges that carry the coal over the Elizabeth River behind Harbor Park.
Aydin Person Walkoff, a consultant for Brazilian ironmaker Companhia Siderurgica de Tubarao, watched over Barden s shoulder. He has handled shipments from Norfolk Southern for almost 30 years and last visited Lamberts Point a decade ago, when the terminal was moving about 20 million tons of coal a year, he said.
“Things change,” Walkoff said. “They do,” Bruce agreed. “The market changes.”
Forty years ago, Walkoff said, Brazil bought 100 percent of its coal from the United States. Now, it imports about 25 percent U.S. coal and the rest from Australia, China and Canada.
That competition has devoured the U.S. coal business. Environmental pressures on mining in the United States have kept the price of domestic coal high. European customers have shifted to lower-cost coal from Australia, South America and South Africa — aided by bargain ocean-freight rates.
In 2000, Norfolk Southern shipped coal through Lamberts Point to 21 countries. Last year, 12 countries received coal from the Norfolk terminal.
After rolling over the scale past Walkoff and Barden, the coal continued through the thaw shed, where any frozen chunks would geta blast of heat. Frozen clumps of coal will stick to the sides of the cars, and customers demand every speck. The cars headed into the barney pit. The barney is a mechanical arm that pushed the cars up a rise in the track to the rotary dumpers. The giant dumpers grasped the rail cars and tipped them upside down, sifting the coal onto the conveyor belts below.
R.L. Williams, a brakeman on the pier for 12 years, stepped out of aheated shed just past the dumpers to “open the knuckle” on the rear left corner of each rail car. That readies the cars to line up again.
These days, Williams said, he earns less overtime than he used to and brings home an annual salary of between $40,000 and $50,000. When work slows at the coal pier, he can look for open jobs at the railroad s Portlock intermodal yard in Chesapeake, where Norfolk Southern moves a variety of freight.
“The big difference for a trainman is you have to work different jobs,” Williams said. “You have to move around to different positions to get the work time you need.”
He has noticed Lamberts Point growing increasingly quiet, mostly in the past three or four years, he said. “When I first started working here, there was a lot more people, a lot more going on, alot more things moving around,” he said. But he had reason for some optimism. “It’s been pretty busy for, I would say, the last six to seven months.”
Once dumped, the coal rode a conveyor belt underground to the pier, where it flowed up into the shiploaders. The empty rail cars rolled into a short switchback, which caught them and sent them down to the empty yard.
Ina tower overlooking the empties, Wayne Troester kept close watch.A car retarder operator who has worked for Norfolk Southern for 33 years, Troester oversaw 240 to 250 rail cars during his eight-hour shift. He slowed them down when necessary and aligned them into trains to head back up the mountains for more loads of coal.
He has seen the number of yard crews shrink from about six or seven per ship to three, he said. Meanwhile, the hoppers, rail cars that hold coal, have doubled in size from 50 tons to 100 tons or more. “We’re actually doing the same amount of coal with less cars and less people,” Troester said.
Other than that, the operation moves just as it did the day the most modern of the railroad s coal loaders, Pier 6, opened in 1962. Computers crept in here and there to collect data, show shiploading paths and provide updated information to the railroad’s customers.
But the consistency has worked in the terminal s favor as volumes declined. Norfolk Southern has to invest little to keep things running, said Baird Spicuzza, the company s director of export coal marketing, based in Roanoke.
Besides routine maintenance, the only major alteration the company has made at the terminal in recent years was the addition of a retention pond for environmental improvement. Water carrying coal residue flows into the pond, where the residue settles to the bottom and the cleaner water continues into the river.
“We can still make money sending coal down to Norfolk because we don’t have huge capital expenses to put into the facility,” Spicuzza said.
Norfolk Southern s coal revenues were $1.4 billion in 2002, or 23 percent of the railroad s total sales. That s down just slightly from $1.5 billion in 2001, or 25 percent of overall revenues.
Of the 170.4 million tons of coal the railroad carried last year, Lamberts Point accounted for almost 10 million tons, or 6 percent. The terminal handled 76 percent of Norfolk Southern s overseas coal exports. About a fifth of Lamberts Point’s volume heads up the U.S. coast for domestic ports.
The railroad’s coal business depends on the ability of U.S. mining companies in its service territory to find customers. All Norfolk Southern can do to push those sales is offer incentives to overseas coal importers for buying the coal that moves on its system.
Four of Norfolk Southern’s top five overseas coal markets in 2002 were in Europe. Spicuzza said he sees hope for new business in Italy and Germany. Manufacturers in China are burning more of that country s less expensive coal, forcing Europeans to look elsewhere for supplies. And prices for Australian coal could rise — making U.S. coal more competitive — as higher fuel rates increase shipping costs for long trips to Europe and as Australian currency loses ground against the U.S. dollar.
Company officials have predicteda modest rebound in coal volumes this year and said they remain committed to the operation at Lamberts Point. That helps keep workers upbeat as the coal heads downhill.
“With the level of business that we still have, we re still a viable part of Norfolk Southern,” Bruce said. “So I don t have any worries about the piers. I think they’ll be here for a long time to come.”