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Local farmers feed into banner year for rail freight

New facility expected to initially add 600 cars to line.

Bill Lackey/Bill Lackey An employee at Heritage Cooperative in Urbana fills a train car with beans Friday, Feb. 11. Staff photo by Bill Lackey

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By Josh Sweigart, Staff Writer Updated 10:06 AM Saturday, February 12, 2011

SPRINGFIELD — Thanks in large part to a good year for local farmers, the West Central Ohio Port Authority had the second best year in its history in 2010.

The regional rail line’s track carried 7,591 carloads last year, WESTCO Secretary Zachary Balassone told the Clark County-Springfield Transportation Coordinating Committee Friday.

“This is back up to where we want to be,” he said, crediting a good yield for grain and increased fertilizer usage.

“The last two to threeyears, we’ve had pretty good growing conditions,” said Steve Bricher, regional grain buyer at Heritage Cooperative in Urbana, which ships grain on WESTCO lines.

And with gas prices going up — making rail freight a favored option — and a massive, multi-modal facility planned to open in Fayette County this year, officials expect the numbers to stay high.

The intermodal facility, Bluegrass Farms of Ohio, is being built near the intersection of U.S. 35 and U.S. 71 with $12.5 million in public funding. It is expected to add 600 cars to the line at first and up to 6,000 at its peak.

WESTCO was created nearly 20 years ago by county commissioners in Champaign, Clark and Fayette counties to preserve local rail freight services. It owns 94 miles of track in these and Logan and Madison counties.

Its stated purpose is to keep local farmers competitive by giving them inexpensive means of getting their goods to market.

“Our agricultural industry is strong as indicated by activities at WESTCO,” said Kent Sherry, TCC vice chairman and member of the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce.

After seeing record usage in 2006, WESTCO has struggled in recent years with usage plummeting to 4,742 carloads in 2009.

“This is a major turnaround of one of our biggest heartburns,” Clark County Commission President John Detrick said.

WESTCO also benefitted last year from roughly $1 million in stimulus funding used to fix or replace 13 old and unsafe bridges. But the system still has numerous bridges that are more than 50 years old, Balassone said, and needs to keep revenues up to keep those bridges safe.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0374.

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