(The following article by Byron Rohrig was posted on the Courier and Press website on April 13.)
EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Outside Alan Barnett’s office sits a 40-foot boxcar of the Louisville, New Albany & Corydon Railroad, a survivor from a fleet the Corydon, Ind.-based short line leased decades ago to other railroads for carrying cargo all over the nation. Now the car stands among other rolling treasures from bygone days preserved at the Indiana Railway Museum in French Lick.
From his desk inside the old depot along Indiana 56 in French Lick, Barnett, 56, runs two railroads. He is president and general manager of the museum, where the old depot is a backdrop in harmony with a nostalgia-tinged excursion train that runs April through October on a scenic, 20-mile round trip out to Cuzco, Ind.
But besides overseeing a museum line that is about “then,” Barnett also runs the for-profit Dubois County Railroad, which must be about “now.” It’s a line that hauls freight loads from the Norfolk Southern yard at Huntingburg to two customers in Jasper, Ind., and one in Dubois, Ind. The excursion line and the freight railroad manage to break even because they share facilities and employees.
Running an excursion train on infrastructure as old as the 1907 French Lick depot may be a selling point for the museum. But roadbed, track and bridges originally built for steam locomotives could be a death trap to Barnett’s and other freight-hauling short lines nationwide, a few in Southwestern Indiana included.
Here’s the problem: Heavier rail cars are coming. Actually, they’re here. To grasp this huge issue for railroading – and for highway congestion, maintenance and expense, since it’s about transport of bulk commodities – try this:
Imagine you’ve gotten a fantastic deal on enough furniture to equip your entire new house, but you must transport it to Evansville from Louisville, Ky. You own a good pickup truck, but you’re going to be making three or more trips if you use it.
You could rent a larger truck. It would be more costly off the top, but with the added capacity, you could haul everything in one trip. A third the mileage, a third the time – you’d save money. Who could resist? But there’s a complication: You live at the end of a long, dirt lane. It’s spring. The ground is soft. Interstate and state roads will bear up easily under your big truckload of furniture. But will the old, creaky wooden bridge across your deep drainage ditch survive? If it collapses, truck and furniture are damaged, maybe destroyed. Or will your big rental truck get stuck in your squishy lane? Getting a big truck pulled out of the mud is not cheap.
The Interstates, in the highway network, are the equivalent of the high-traffic, high speed, Class I American rail lines. But your driveway is like the typical short line – adequate for low-speed travel, low-volume traffic and relatively light duty, but unequal to loads much heavier than your pickup can carry. In the ’50s and ’60s, when the 40-foot Louisville, New Albany & Corydon boxcars still were riding the rails, such 100,000- to 120,000-pound capacity units were a mainstay in railway shipping.
In those days, it must have seemed roadbeds built to withstand the heavier steam locomotives would be adequate forever. Weights edged up to 200,000 pounds during the ’60s – no problem. Most of them accommodated even the 263,000-pound car, which up to now has been standard.
But the roadbeds won’t be adequate for 286,000-pound cars. The high-volume, Class I carriers – CSX, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific among them – already have upgraded. Virtually all new covered hopper cars – the usually gray cars dominant in most train loads nowadays – are being built to 286,000-pound specifications. Dubois County Railroad’s biggest customer uses covered hoppers exclusively. Nonetheless, Barnett still is keeping his fingers crossed. A Jasper oil company, the line’s second-biggest shipper, is likely to continue using tank cars whose weights fall beneath his line’s current weight limit. And if Barnett can continue to get older covered-hopper cars to serve the expanding needs of the elevator at Dubois, he will – even if that means the Dubois County Railroad would acquire and maintain its own fleet.
“We’ve looked into that. As long as the supply of older cars remains available, we’ll be all right,” says Barnett, hoping to stave off 286,000 pounds as long as possible. Barnett and other short-line operators are used to employing that kind of creativity. The Norfolk Southern abandoned what now are the Dubois County and the Hoosier Southern railroads in Southwestern Indiana, while Conrail – later carved up by the Norfolk Southern and CSX giants – abandoned the Indianapolis-to-Evansville line that now is the Indiana Southern, part of the RailAmerica short line network.
“They were not cost-effective for the major railroads – low density, high maintenance, old bridges, small weight of the track,” Barnett explained. “We make them work.”
Without the short lines that took over some of the routes, many communities and businesses would be without any rail service. Costlier and highway-clogging truck transport would be the only other option. That not only drives up the cost of goods, but also is a safety and public-policy issue, since trucks travel roads built and maintained with tax dollars.
Many short lines, with a longer and more diverse customer list, don’t have Barnett’s options in postponing 286,000-pound (and eventually heavier) cars. That’s why Dick Neumann, chief executive of the Port Authority of Tell City, Ind., is joining Barnett and a host of short-line operators nationwide, pushing Congress to pass the Local Railroad Rehabilitation and Investment Act of 2003. The port entity Neumann heads operates the Hoosier Southern Railroad’s 18-mile stretch from Lincoln City to Tell City and controls tracks which stretch upriver to Cannelton, Ind. Nature had virtually reclaimed the abandoned roadbed until the port authority gained control of it in the mid-1990s. That move immediately led to Waupaca Foundry’s decision to locate in Tell City, illustrating the rail line’s worth to the community.
Neumann said existing customers as well as new industries being courted by Perry County officials “are demanding 286. If we don’t find a solution, then there could be business lost by the small railroads. If you figure four trucks to every rail car, that’s going to create more pressure on highways and local roads. Plus, the railroads are a lot more fuel-efficient than trucks.
“We’re trying to make the case that short-line railroads are vital to the continued economic viability of the state and the country as a whole.” said Neumann. “Once you’ve lost a railroad, it doesn’t come back.”
Neumann said the local railroad rehab measure, also known as H.R. 876, is supported by 8th District Rep. John Hostettler, and the companion Senate legislation is co-sponsored by Indiana’s senators. It would provide a tax credit of $10,000 per track mile to short lines from 2004 to 2008. As the bill is proposed, the lines don’t have to apportion the money by the mile, but could spend the allotment anywhere on the right of way. Where the tax credit would be larger than the railroad’s tax bill, the railroad could sell the credit to other railroads or the suppliers and contractors used in their upgrades. That’s especially significant for the Hoosier Southern, who is owned by a public entity.
But it would only be part of the solution.
An Indiana Department of Transportation study says it’ll take $100 million to upgrade all the state’s short lines to handle 286,000-pound rail car traffic. The state’s annual contribution to 30 Hoosier short lines is about $1.2 million, on average.
Neumann vision of upgrading doesn’t stop at 286,000. Within a decade, most rail experts think the American Association of Railroads, which approved “286,” within a decade will boost car capacity to 315,000 pounds. Neumann says it won’t cost that much more to go to 315,000.