(The following story by Tim Hahn appeared at GoErie.com on January 28.)
MEADVILLE, Pa. — William Burt said he couldn’t fault the skeptics when they questioned whether his New York-based railroad could build business on 41.8 miles of Pennsylvania track.
The track, stretching from Meadville to Corry, was operating “on a very low level of activity” when the Western New York & Pennsylvania Railroad offered to buy the line in 2001, said Burt, the railroad’s president and chief operating officer.
The line also needed a lot of physical improvements, he said.
Burt isn’t ready to claim victory over the naysayers. But railroad officials are ready to celebrate its sixth anniversary of ownership feeling pretty good about the purchase, he said.
Traffic on the line has grown from a few trains a week to several trains a day. The use of the line by local businesses has also grown, railroad officials said.
“It’s a work in progress. I don’t know if I’d declare victory yet,” Burt said. “But I think it’s fair to say that we’re happy with how things are going.”
The Meadville-to-Corry line that the WNY&P acquired from the Northwest Pennsylvania Rail Authority in early 2002 for $1 and the cancellation of $1.9 million of authority debt is part of a more-extensive route that travels into Hornell, N.Y.
The Pennsylvania section was nearly lost in the early 1990s when Conrail stopped running trains between Meadville and Hornell and announced plans to abandon the track between Corry and Meadville. Local leaders stepped in a few years later and created the Northwest Pennsylvania Rail Authority to buy the line.
“Our mission was to save the line, pure and simple, because we knew if the rails were ever taken out of the ground, they would never be put back in,” said Erie County Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Rick Novotny, who represented Corry on the rail authority.
The line’s use, which initially included some weekend passenger train excursions between Meadville and Corry, grew slowly. Things began to pick up a bit after the WNY&P acquired it in 2002 and opened the extended line between Meadville and Hornell, N.Y., in 2003 to connect to Norfolk Southern Railroad lines at both ends.
Coal trains began using the line in 2004 and now make daily trips, officials said.
The railroad has also put on a dedicated mixed-use service that runs daily between Meadville and Olean, N.Y., with the train heading east to Olean in the morning and returning to Meadville in the afternoon, Burt said.
Local businesses that use the line include Dad’s Pet Products, Meadville Metals and Universal Well Services in Meadville, Lord Corp. in Saegertown and Erie Plastics in Corry.
The rail service has expanded into other areas. The WNY&P runs trains on roughly 45 miles of track between Meadville and Rouseville in Venango County that it acquired through a lease with Norfolk Southern in December 2005.
The railroad added another link in August when it became the operator of a roughly 110-mile stretch of line between Driftwood, Cameron County, and Machias, N.Y., south of Buffalo.
“Traffic patterns have changed in such a way that we are receiving more traffic over the Meadville line,” Burt said.
Plans are in the works to get even more local businesses to use the rail line this year. Burt said he could not comment specifically on which businesses are expressing an interest. But a lot of interest is coming from the Meadville area, although there have been inquiries from Cambridge Springs and Corry, he said.
The Economic Progress Alliance of Crawford County reported during the fall that Suit-Kote and Ashtabula Iron & Metal, both tenants of the West Mead Industrial Park, were talking with the railroad about constructing a siding to add rail service to their businesses.
An official with Suit-Kote, which produces road construction and maintenance materials, said last week that the company has asked for rail access but has not yet been granted it.
Also on tap for this year are several rail line improvement projects highlighted by the rebuilding of the WNY&P’s rail yard in Meadville.
The $1.3 million project, supported by an $850,000 state grant awarded in October 2006, will extend yard track to allow for the safer handling of coal trains coming from the south, officials said. The track switches on the eastern end of the yard will also be rebuilt, Burt said.
Other improvement projects scheduled for this year include some track work through Meadville and Mill Village and just west of Corry, and the addition of a “runaround” track in a rail yard near Rouseville, Burt said.