(The following story by Jan H. Kennedy appeared on the Canton Repository website on September 6.)
BREWSTER, Ohio — With the tenacity of the “little engine that could,” Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway has chugged its way up and over a mountain of debt and is picking up speed as the economy improves.
“We’re a barometer of the economy,” said Bill Callison, vice president, law and government relations. “When there’s a recession and customers stop shipping, we’re the first to see it. When the economy is expanding, we also are the first to see it.”
Shipping has increased significantly, especially in the last six months, Callison said.
“We’ve seen a 19 percent growth rate,” he said. “It’s across the board, but especially steel, stone, chemicals, lumber, paper and grain.”
Wheeling & Lake Erie was spun off from Norfolk Southern Railway in 1990 with a whopping $40 million debt. That was paid down to $2 million at the first of the year. Its success has earned it the “National Regional Railroad of the Year” award from Railway Age magazine.
The company is not ready to rest on its laurels. It received a $25 million loan from the Federal Railroad Administration this year to improve its infrastructure. The company will replace 168,000 rail ties on 315 miles of track in 20 Ohio counties. The majority of the tracks are in Stark County. Jointed rails will be replaced by welded continuous rails, which allow more speed by the trains and reduce the chance of derailments.
“The issue with most of our customers isn’t so much time as reliability,” Callison said. “We don’t need derailments, and the welded continuous rails will reduce that possibility.”
The new rail also allows the company to accept the heavier railroad cars that now are coming from the larger railroads to the smaller carriers, such as Wheeling & Lake Erie.
“These are 286,000-pound cars, and they really beat up jointed track,” he said. “The welded continuous rail is much easier to maintain, and we’ll see some significant savings there.”
Speed of delivery remains an important factor to many customers. Most of the company’s tracks are graded for 25-mile-per-hour traffic. Some areas allow 40 miles per hour. The welded continuous track will upgrade the ratings to 40 miles per hour in most areas, Callison said.
The company also is nearly finished building new siding stations in Medina and Akron. That will keep the main tracks open for traffic.
“It allows us to switch cars for our customers on the side, instead of on the main track,” Callison said. “We no longer will have to hold up other trains.”
Why borrow so much money now after years of struggling to pay down the original debt?
Wheeling & Lake Erie has added about 50 customers in the last decade in Northeast Ohio, and revenues have risen to $50 million this year, compared to $32 million in 1992. The company now has about 170 customers.
“We have the ability to service the debt now,” Callison said. “With the new customers, we felt it was a good time to invest in infrastructure, both for safety and to better service our customers.”
The company has about 380 to 400 employees now. More than 100 have been hired in the last year, and they will need at least another 50 as quickly as they can find the people. These jobs are not for everyone, Calllison said.
“Of the 100 we hired, only 40 to 50 are still with us,” he said. “There’s a lot of traveling and a lot of hours. A person has to be physically strong and reasonably well educated, since you have to read and understand the rule books for several types of train systems, and because so much of our operations now include computerized systems. The pay is good, but a lot of people just can’t deal with it.”
Maintenance, locomotive mechanics and car men start at about $30,000 and can go up to $40,000, Callison said. Conductors and brakemen are in the low-$40,000 to low-$60,000 range, and engineers make between $50,000 and $70,000. The clerical workers earn from the high $20,000s to upper $30,000s.
For more information about Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway, visit its Web site at
www.wlerwy.com