At a meeting Tuesday, the West Virginia Port Authority Board of Directors unanimously approved a resolution authorizing the board chairman to begin seeking out a business or operator to lease the Heartland Intermodal Gateway at Pritchard, W.Va., located along Norfolk Southern’s Kenova District main line. The resolution directs that the lessee would enter into a short-term agreement to operate the facility, which has mostly failed to gain traction as a significant road-to-rail terminal. The Charleston Gazette-Mail newspaper reports that the facility is likely to shut down this fall and could go on the auction block within a year.
The $32 million Heartland Intermodal Gateway was opened in 2015 with the intent that the 100-acre facility would serve businesses and industry in southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and southern Ohio. The facility is located along the Big Sandy River and is about 10 miles from Interstate 64 at Kenova. The Gazette Mail reports that Port Authority President Byrd White said Norfolk Southern will stop service to the facility in October unless the railroad can reach a 15,000-container-per-year threshold. WCHS-TV reports that White said the facility is losing a half-million dollars per year.
The Heartland Intermodal Gateway was constructed to be a significant terminal along NS’s Heartland Corridor between Chicago and ports in Hampton Roads, Va. NS donated most of the land used to construct the intermodal facility, and also undertook a major project to raise the height restriction in dozens of tunnels to allow double-stack containers to be shipped along the Heartland Corridor.
An employee with the port authority told Trains News Wire says a railcar repair firm has expressed interest in locating at the facility, but she did not specifically name which firm has expressed interest.
Haven’t checked lately but after G&W took over the Heart of Georgia railroad over a year ago the intermodal between Savannah and the inland port of Vadalia dried up. For awhile it was growing pretty good. It was neat to see double stack trains on a short line, especially as the track had been up for abandonment a few years earlier.
Always easier to dump and sell the business than grow it to achieve profitability. Typical PSR at work. This industry has no future.
It takes time to develop the import inland logistics supply chain from post Panamax eastern ports. Particularly now with tariffs on imports with China. And it’s not like anything much is happening in this particular geography besides shale gas and downstream. Maybe when those huge ethane cracking plants come online the world’s growing appetite for plastic pellets could provide matchback export loads from this terminal.
Other than existing supply chains to places like Greer, SC I wonder how any of these eastern inland port extensions are doing.