(The following story by John D. Boyd appeared on the Traffic World website on February 3, 2009.)
Short line operator Watco got an early start on its Grand Elk Railroad project in Michigan, after the Surface Transportation Board cleared the way late last week.
The company named Rodney Gordon as general manager of the new railroad, which will lease 123 miles of track and some other facilities from Norfolk Southern Railway and be headquartered in Kalamazoo. Shasta Stump is GER’s vice president of sales.
Rick Webb, Watco’s CEO, said the company began taking applications for Grand Elk’s 58 jobs around mid-January, and by month’s end more than 1,600 had poured in.
“The number of applications says a lot about the economic condition we are in,” he said, “but we are confident that with sound investments in the track infrastructure, and the hiring of quality people to build a team that is focused on customer satisfaction, we will be in a position to support the economic growth of this area.”
Watco President Terry Towner said GM Gordon is a longtime Michigan resident and former Canadian National Railway employee who had already been managing the venture’s planning for several months.
Towner said Stump is “one of our best business development officers,” who previously led sales and marketing efforts for some Watco railroads in Kansas and Oklahoma.
Grand Elk starts operations April 1. Towner said the company plans to first hire its conductors and train engineers, and fill all other GER jobs by the end of this month. Watco intends to invest in track upgrades to build average train speeds on the low-volume NS tracks, and boost traffic levels.
The deal came together quickly. Watco first filed an STB waiver notice in November to lease the NS tracks from Grand Rapids, Mich., to Elkhart, Ind.
The Michigan Economic Development Corp soon asked the STB to slow down the process but the STB quickly rejected that stay request. Then the United Transportation Union and later the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen asked for stays, but the board on Jan. 29 rejected their petitions as well.