PRICHARD, W.Va. — R.J. Corman Railroad Group has leased a former Norfolk Southern intermodal facility in Pritchard — the state’s only intermodal terminal when it was closed after four disappointing years — and originally plans to use it as a car repair site.
However, long-term goals could see the facility, built for $32 million, returned to at least some of the original use intended when it was built in 2015, the Huntington Herald-Dispatch reports.
On Monday, R.J. Corman signed a lease for the site, and over the next 90 days will prepare it for use to repair auto racks. The company will then look for other uses for the 100-acre facility, R.J. Croman Vice President of Commercial Development Michael Robinson told the Herald-Dispatch. That could include storage in transit — when loaded cars, often of plastics, are held until the materials are ordered — transloading, or even a return of intermodal service.
The Heartland Intermodal Gateway was built by the West Virginia Port Authority, on land donated by NS, with the goal of handling 15,000 containers a year. But the facility saw container counts as low as 68 a month and sustained annual losses of up to $500,000, leading to its closure in 2019 [see “West Virginia’s only intermodal terminal to close …,” Trains News Wire, July 29, 2019]. Efforts to sell the facility for as little as $1 million failed, and the facility was eventually deeded to Wayne County in 2022.
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