Railroaders place to shoot the shit.

A $4.9-million federal grant will rehabilitate the Nebraska NorthWestern railroad line from Chadron, Neb., to Dakota Junction and the tracks in the Chadron rail yard, the Chadron Record reports. That will lower shipping costs and improve market access for ag producers and increase employment and business for the region, according to Jack Nielsen, president of the railroad.It will also advance the shortline railroad's business plan by 20 years.

"What we are doing is building the foundation," Nielsen said at a press conference announcing the U.S. Department of Transportation TIGER II grant. "A lot of money will come in. We have to build our plans so we take advantage of the infrastructure once we build it."

The grant is expected to pay about 80 percent of the cost of upgrading the 7.5 miles of track from Chadron to Dakota Junction, where the line meets a Canadian Pacific track, rehabilitating approximately 7.5 miles of track in the Chadron yard, and repair bridges and road crossings on the line, said Nielsen. NNW will raise the remaining $1.2 million from its principals and other investors, he said.

NNW, which bought the Chadron yard and the line to Dakota Junction from Canadian Pacific earlier this year, plans to use the Chadron yards and roundhouse as a site for repair and maintenance of railroad cars, locomotives and track construction equipment.

The wooden roundhouse where much of the work will take place, a massive structure built in the early 1900s, is one of the few remaining in the region, said Nielsen. That building and the convenient access to the BNSF at Crawford, about 20 miles away, make Chadron's rail connection significant, Nielsen said. "No other shortline has that advantage."

The line into Chadron and the tracks in the yard are badly in need of repair, however, because there was virtually no maintenance done since the Chicago and North Western Railroad closed its operations here in the early 1990s, according to Terry Doyle, vice president of operations for NNW. "The tracks are the victim of deferred maintenance," Doyle said.

Plans are to replace the jointed rail from Chadron to Dakota Junction with the more advanced continuous welded rail, said Doyle. NNW, which leases the rail line from Dakota Junction to Crawford from CP, will also have to upgrade that line to handle the traffic it expects to generate, including some of the largest locomotives currently in use, Nielsen said.

Approximately 20 bridges on the line between Chadron and Crawford will also have to be improved so that they can carry the weight of heavy locomotives and large shipments of grain, Nielsen said.

Nielsen, a principal in Diamond Hill Farms in Alliance, Neb., emphasized the long-term advantages of maintaining Chadron's railroad connection. The track to Crawford is almost all that remains of a line that once stretched east all the way across Nebraska. Nielsen said one reason he is involved in the railroad is concern about losing the ability to move agricultural products to market efficiently.

"There's nothing cheap about running heavy trucks down a highway," said Nielsen. "A 120-car train takes 400 trucks off the roads. That's a reduction in wear and tear and emissions."

The short connection to the main BNSF line to the Powder River Basin coalfields in Wyoming is also valuable for the railroad equipment repair business, said Nielsen, because it can mean shorter trips for service. "We are right at the gateway to that coal line," he said. "They can get service in a day."

The TIGER grant "allows us to do in a few years what would have taken 20," said Nielsen.

The NNW grant was one of 42 funded nationwide from more than 1,000 applications for the second round of the TIGER (Transportation Enhancements Generating Economic Recovery) program, part of the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act program, noted Jennifer Rogers, western Nebraska representative of Sen. Ben Nelson.

It is the only TIGER II grant in Nebraska.