Posted from the Yahoo! Railspot group, this interesting bit of news: Posted on Tue, Apr. 13, 2004 Railroad's plan turns city into cargo hub Railroad owner Watco plans a Wichita center to move freight from trucks to trains and then on to its port facility at Houston. BY PHYLLIS JACOBS GRIEKSPOOR The Wichita Eagle A Kansas-based company plans to build a shipping center in Wichita that could advance the city's efforts to become a regional transportation hub. Watco Cos. of Pittsburg, Kan., hopes to build a freight yard that can transfer cargo from rail to trucks and vice versa within the next 18 months. Watco, the parent company of the Kansas & Oklahoma Railroad, took a big step toward that goal with the acquisition of the 640-acre Greensport Industrial Park, which is adjacent to the Houston Ship Channel. It began operating the facility -- one of the busiest foreign-cargo ports in the United States -- on Friday. "This gives us an oceangoing dock, enabling us to bring products from anywhere in the world -- and to ship out products to anywhere in the world," Ed McKechnie, executive vice president for strategic development at Watco, said Monday. Janet Harrah, director of Wichita State University's Small Business and Economic Development Center, said an intermodal shipping facility, such as the one Watco hopes to build, is one of the missing pieces needed to develop Wichita's potential as a transportation and distribution hub. "The state has identified that as one of the sectors with growth potential," Harrah said. Such a facility would also strengthen Wichita's manufacturing sector by providing cheaper freight costs, she said. "For manufacturers, the closer you are to an intermodal facility, the cheaper it is to ship," Harrah said. "That could be a huge deal to manufacturers." Intermodal shipping in Wichita would also be a boost to the agricultural sector, she said, because farm products are shipped all over the country and the world, both as raw commodities and as food products. McKechnie said the idea would be to build 100-car trains of products that could be transported to inland customers. He said diesel fuel and petroleum chemicals would be obvious products for transport. "One of the great things about this is that it doesn't take a lot of startup capital or effort," McKechnie said. "What it takes is a forklift and a crane that can lift a container off a railcar and put it on a truck chassis, or the ability to unload material such as diesel fuel from a railcar into a tanker truck." The operation could start with existing employees and facilities and add as its customer base grew, he said. The Greensport facility includes more than 4,000 feet of frontage to the Houston Ship Channel, including a deep-water dock capable of serving some of the world's largest ceangoing vessels. Greensport, formerly owned by AK Steel, closed in the early 1980s. AK Steel has been working to convert portions of the facility into a ultimodal industrial park since then. Watco already operates an intermodal facility in Tulsa. In addition to the Kansas & Oklahoma Railroad, Watco operates the South Kansas & Oklahoma Railroad and the Southeast Kansas Railroad. The company operates 2,500 miles of track in 23 states and is the nation's largest privately-held short-line railroad company. It employs 400 people in Kansas and has an annual payroll of $12 million.
Very interesting, and the best part is "...it doesn't take a lot of startup capital....." Thanks for the heads-up on this Bob. Bill
