NS maintenance-of-way crews cut the rails earlier this week putting 50 miles of mainline railroad in southeast Ohio out-of-service.
The former Conrail line connecting Columbus, Ohio, with Dickinson Yard in Belle, W.Va., is now out of service between Glouster, Ohio, and just south of Hobson Yard in Middleport, Ohio. To the north of the severed connection, Genesee & Wyoming’s Ohio Central Railroad continues to serve a coal mine at Milepost 65.5 in central Ohio.
South of Hobson Yard in Middleport, the rails are out-of-service as far south as a section of CSX Transportation-owned right of way at Milepost 116.5. The out-of-service section encompasses 50 miles of mainline rail in addition to several yard tracks in Hobson, a siding, and a couple of industrial spur tracks north of Hobson Yard. There was no online business on the section of track recently removed from service.
NS detoured the two daily general merchandise freight trains that operated on the West Virginia Secondary in February, removing most rail traffic from the line. Norfolk Southern is providing local service to customers with a new local that operates six days a week between Alloy, W.Va., and Nitro, W.Va. To the north of Nitro, trains will operate as needed to the CSX and NS interchange at Milepost 128.6 in Point Pleasant, W.Va. Service to the interchange requires a round trip distance of about 100 miles from Nitro Yard at Milepost 170.
While the rails north of Nitro Yard remain in service, only a couple trains per month are running north of Nitro to pickup inbound cars at two local industries and the interchange. Despite the irregular shipments, local fans recently spotted an NS ballast train near Point Pleasant.
Norfolk Southern has yet to say if it will reactivate any portion of the idled section.
@Carbone : I guess that you’ve forgotten that while both parties have hurt Amtrak. IE President Carter ordered Amtrak to cut trains. But you can’t forget what the republicans are doing now to Amtrak. IE Amtrak eliminating dining car service on the Silver Star. And, Amtrak has done damage to itself. Their poor choices on certain presidents. So there is plenty of blame to go around. Full disclosure. I’m an Amtrak supporter.
How interesting! Now maybe Trains will print the news items I sent them in Aug 2015 about CSX doing the same thing on their East St. Louis, IL-Vincennes, IN main line between Caseyville and Flora, IL
Amazing story.We will see more of this in the coming months
Welcome to the new Peavine
Cutting the rail is not really a regulation from what I understand, but it is done to save money on taxes according to a longtime friend and railroad inspector. Switches are spiked for the same reason I was also told, but I could be wrong here, so please be easy on me.
Neither party cares much about working man jobs
As part of the war on coal mines close and miners get “benefits”. i.e. Welfare
your right, maybe I’m a bit ignorant about companies like NS & CSX abandoning and slashing peoples jobs & and I apologize profusely if I am. I guess I need help……………
As a US Railway Association operations analyst in the early 1980s, I rode this line — unusually on Conrail trains CODI and DICO — many times. After leaving USRA, while waiting to return to college, I did a few months of fill-in news anchor work at WCHS-TV Channel 8 in Charleston. I’d see the big Contrail trains almost every day from the newsroom window.
That rail traffic has declined to the point where NS can sever the thru route is a sad but clear signal concerning the de-industrialization of the US. Change is inevitable, but it is still sad to wonder where folks in the Kanawha River Valley now get their paychecks. McDonalds? HomeGoods? Big Lots?
@Carbone…the line is mothballed, not abandoned, those are two entirely different functions. If the line had been abandoned NS would have pulled up the rails, in the case of mothballed, the rails stay in place, so that in the future if traffic would warrant it again the line could be reactivated.
Carbone, clearly you don’t and haven’t paid attention to what the POTUS said early in his tenure about HS rail. After the US’s and particularly Congress’s reaction to that, he learned the best thing he could do to benefit passenger rail is NOT bring attention to it. FYI The US is still a Capitalist country, despite what people like you believe. The bottom line TODAY, not the future, is what rules with ANY private business.
To Freadhoff. Physically isolating the out-of-service track to deny access is required by federal regulations.
Further to your concern about an emergency situation. If operations were for some reason suddenly needed on the line, a skilled Maintenance of Way crew could stitch the rails together in an hour, maybe two hours at the most. And the necessary paperwork reactivating the line also could be cranked out quickly, in less than a day.
This seems drastic. Why cut the rails? Kinda like “If I can’t use it, neither can you, na na na na boo boo.”
God how much this grinds my gears when a company decides to abandon rails.
I’m surprised that president Obama never talks about trains in politics, all he talks about is fixing the budget, goes on vacations every couple of months and says that the economy is in great shape.
Are you kiddin me with this??? Obama should address that America is cutting back its railway system WAY WAY WAY back.
Hmm…. I guess we all understand the line is out of service for now. Why cut the rail? In an emergency situation with a need for the line, NS would find itself SOL. I suppose it could be worse, EHH would have torn have torn up the track all together. That is after he put his mother out on a street corner if he hasn’t already.
I guess the Ringling Brothers circus train that visits Charleston, WV about this time of year will have to take a different route to reach Columbus, OH. In years past after the last performance in Charleston the train would go up the Secondary.