(The following story by Mark Fischenich appeared on The Free Press website on September 24.)
MANKATO, Minn. — The Minnesota Prairie Line won’t anytime soon be threatening the dominance of the Union Pacific as America’s biggest railroad.
The Union Pacific has 32,300 miles of track, 104,700 freight cars and 8,500 locomotives.
The Minnesota Prairie Line has 94 miles of track, 175 freight cars and two locomotives.
The Union Pacific operates in 23 states and covers the western two-thirds of the United States.
The Minnesota Prairie Line operates in five counties and covers the needs of Gaylord, Winthrop, Fairfax and a dozen other small towns.
But the Prairie Line is crucial to those towns even as it struggles to coax its aging rails to hold up to the increasing demands of shippers, particularly Winthrop’s Heartland Corn Products ethanol plant.
“This is the most important economic development project in my district,” said state Sen. Kathy Sheran, DFL-Mankato.
The project is the railroad’s attempt to get $30 million from the state and $20 million from the federal government to upgrade its nearly century-old track.
The track, which is owned by a five-county organization known as the Minnesota Valley Regional Rail Authority, has undergone some improvements this decade. At one point, a brisk walker could move more quickly than the trains on the line. And the track was so decrepit in places that there was once a derailment while the rail cars were standing still.
It’s now a 10 mph track, but the ethanol-hauling trains are allowed to travel no faster than 7 mph, said Mark Wegner, president of the Minnesota Prairie Line — a subsidiary of the Glencoe-based Twin Cities and Western Railroad Co. Even at that speed, each train follows an inspection vehicle that checks the tracks for problems as it travels to Norwood Young America.
In addition, ethanol trains are restricted to 30 or fewer cars — meaning they have to be staged into 112-car unit trains in the western suburbs of the Twin Cities before making the journey to California or other destinations. Those precautions were put in place after a rail, despite inspections, snapped last December because of an internal defect.
“Obviously it costs a lot of money to do things that way,” Wegner said.
If the state and federal governments ultimately come through with all of the requested money, the track would be upgraded from the light 80-pound rail laid 95 years ago to modern 115-pound rail that would allow trains to travel up to 25 mph.
Officials from the ethanol plant and other industries along the route told state senators last week of the importance of the rail line — not only to their businesses but to the economy of the area. A representative of the ethanol plant said the facility was able to expand from a 35 million gallon plant to a 90 million gallon producer because of the availability of a rail line.
Heartland now employs more than 50 workers and about every three weeks fills 110 rail cars with ethanol. If the fuel was being shipped by truck instead, it would be putting about 400 more trucks on the roads and highways. On top of that, about 75 rail cars a month are filled with dried distillers grain — a byproduct of ethanol used as animal feed — replacing about 260 semi trucks.
For Wegner, one of the most interesting moments of the railroad’s meeting with the state lawmakers was when an official from a Canadian company talked about the potential for a major tire recycling project in Redwood County if the rail line is upgraded.
Wegner remembers when, six years ago, people promoted an upgrade of the railroad by citing hopes of economic development to the rural counties along the route. With the line operating, albeit at half-speed or less, the economic development has come and it’s promising to come faster if the railroad can keep up.
“That’s a fundamental shift and a good one,” Wegner said.
Julie Rath, the administrator of the rail authority, said the economic benefits of an improved Prairie Line could extend well into Nicollet County and other places within 30 miles of the track. Shippers are looking for opportunities to use rail to move their product.
“But it’s got to be dependable before they’ll be willing to ship on it,” Rath said.
Beyond being a sound investment in rural Minnesota’s economy, plugging taxpayer dollars into the Prairie Line could be a money saver in the long term, proponents of the railroad say. By getting all those trucks off the roads, highway maintenance costs will be reduced.
And officials from the railroad and the rail authority promised that once the track is modernized, they will take care of the rest. Redwood County Commissioner Gene Short, the vice chairman of the rail authority, said the railroad will not need taxpayer help to cover operating costs or future maintenance of the new track.
“It’s not going to be like an Amtrak where we keep coming back every two or three years for more money,” Short said.