"Shortline railroads keep American towns humming"
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Shortline railroads keep American towns humming
By BEN DOBBIN (AP) – 1 day ago
AVON, N.Y. — After an hour of shunting rail cars aside, a 1964-vintage locomotive operated by Tim "Brown Dog" Carney nudges six hopper-loads down an embankment into a pasta factory. It's a routine delivery: 540 tons of semolina flour milled in St. Louis from durum wheat grown in North Dakota. The Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad, a scrappy private firm with 30 employees and $4.5 million in sales, owns just 27 miles of track in a pocket of rural western New York. But it offers bulk freight shippers like Parma, Italy-based Barilla Group customized access to America's 140,000-mile rail network. Never mind tax breaks, cheap land or owner Guido Barilla's delight at the proximity of the Finger Lakes wine region. Without that rail ribbon, the world's biggest pasta maker wouldn't have contemplated putting a $100 million-plus Northeast hub in this neck of the woods in 2007. "It was a must for us," said Kirk Trofholz, president of Barilla's U.S. subsidiary.
