(The following story by John D. Boyd appeared on the Traffic World website on February 11, 2009.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. The railroad with the straightest route down the continent and the one that has led in creating higher-speed freight corridors said they want to partner on a track-sharing "MidAmerica Corridor."
Canadian National Railway said it would bring its key north-south lines that parallel the Mississippi River, while Norfolk Southern Railway would link up with CN at key junctures and add time-saving connections to other destinations.
The carriers said they want to share track between the leading rail hub cities of Chicago and St. Louis, plus the states of Kentucky, and Mississippi "to establish shorter and faster routes for merchandise and coal traffic moving between the Midwest and Southeast.
CN runs all across Canada and down the Mississippi Valley. NS earlier teamed with Kansas City Southern to create faster east-west rail corridor called the Meridian Speedway, and is now well into a three-year Heartland Corridor project to create a fast doublestack container train route from Hampton Roads, Va., ports to Columbus, Ohio.
Under the MidAm plan, which is subject to approval by the Surface Transportation Board, NS would haul CN's freight between Chicago and St. Louis, cutting 60 miles off CN's current route and providing gateway connections to other railroads that CN does not now have at St. Louis.
NS will use CN's tracks between St. Louis and Fulton, Ky., saving the U.S. carrier more than 50 miles on that route. CN will also haul NS freight between Chicago and Fulton, cutting nearly 100 mile off the Chicago-to-Birmingham route NS now uses.
They also plan a coal gateway at Corinth, Miss., to connect NS-served southeastern power plants with CN-served Illinois Basin coal mines.
