Indiana & Ohio SD40-2 No. 4083 handles the first test car to Jeffersonville, Ohio, on July 26, 2018. The train is crossing the Chicago, Fort Wayne & Eastern main line at Sugar Street in Lima, Ohio, the same line that brought the car to the city.
Zach Marlow
LIMA, Ohio – Canadian Pacific and Genesee & Wyoming have launched a new intermodal lane between Vancouver, British Columbia, and southwest Ohio with six-day-per-week service.
Containers move through the terminal near Jeffersonville, which enables easy access to the Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton markets, according to CP spokesman Andy Cummings. “The new service is an ideal end-to-end supply-chain offering for auto parts shippers, as it bypasses Chicago interchanges, offers flexible destinations, and creates compelling round-trip economics, including opportunities for the backhaul of agricultural products,” he says.
The service started in late July.
The 90-acre terminal is owned and operated by a corn and soybean producer, Bluegrass Farms of Ohio, and is located near Interstate 71.
East of Chicago, the service operates on the Chicago, Fort Wayne & Eastern’s former Pennsylvania Railroad main line to Lima. From there it runs south on the Indiana & Ohio’s onetime Detroit, Toledo & Ironton main line to Jeffersonville.
Service has not started yet. The car pictured was a test car and there have not been any more since. The I&O is still dealing with track work south of Lima to get the line up to 40 mph, which is why it hasn’t started yet.
Interesting announcement coming considering the CSX declaration the past week. CSX should drop the pretense and simply sell off all their assets west of Ohio, except the Chicago routes. Let regionals handle traffic west of Appalachia to the Mississippi River. CSX can stick to its New York/Jacksonville/Chicago Triangle with its Memphis leg and what ever coal they want to keep around.
I understand this is a one car test train, and I understand this new lane is about less time sensitive International boxes. And I don’t believe this service is ever going to be high volume, but it’s still interesting business for G&W and drives volume (my favorite way to get a lower OR through reduced cost per unit) for CP Vancouver-Chicago.
But maybe CSX should let G&W serve the North Baltimore, Chambersburg, Springfield, MA and Syracuse ramps since CSX wants to (somewhat understandably) concentrate all western steel wheel interchange traffic to those ramps. And then have the short G&W “sprint” trains run trackage rights from those “western traffic steel wheel terminals” to the lower volume CSX ramps at Cleveland, Baltimore, Worcester, Philadelphia. Thereby relieving the issue of no dray capacity.
Note that I left off Detroit (reasonable dray from North Baltimore) and Columbus or Cincinnati (let the G&W haul to its Jeffersonville, OH ramp instead for Columbus, Cincy and Dayton also reasonable drays). All G&W needs to be able to make money on this is a rate division that exceeds the (high because no capacity) dray price from the CSX handoff terminal. I bet that’s better per mile than what they’re getting for the ocean boxes mentioned in the article (but that’s a longer haul probably in existing carload freight service a la INRD Indy intermodal from CN) too admittedly).