Free Republic

October 20, 2015 Norfolk Southern Railway Company and its rail operating subsidiaries (“NSR”) will no longer accept shipments of Poisonous-Inhalation-Hazard (“PIH”) commodities, effective Dec. 1, 2015. PIH commodities in transit on Dec. 1, 2015 will be delivered to destination by Dec. 31, 2015. Starting on December 1, 2015, NS will not pull PIH loads or residual cars from a facility on NS and will not accept such cars at interchange. As to traffic requiring interchange with a connecting railroad, the effective date of this cessation of service shall be accelerated as necessary to comply with any earlier cessation of service...

NEAR KERMIT, W.Va. Floodlights glared deep in a century-old tunnel under an Appalachian hillside. An excavator poked at the arched ceiling like a pterodactyl. Chunks of sandstone shattered and fell thunderously into an empty rail car. Work has gone on like this for nearly a year. Crews begin at 2 a.m. and call it a day about noon. In late March, they still were a few hundred feet from the south end of Norfolk Southern’s Big Sandy 1, a 2,627-foot railroad tunnel burrowed through a hill that sits along the Big Sandy River separating West Virginia from Kentucky. Their task:...

A tractor-trailer loaded with canned beans was struck by a southbound Norfolk Southern freight train at the Coile Street railroad crossing off Snapps Ferry Road about 6:45 a.m. this morning. No injuries were reported as a result of the collision. GPD Officer Jeff Craft said at the scene this morning that Bobby Coffey, the driver of the Swift Transportation tractor-trailer, told police he had been attempting to enter the lot of the So-Pak-Co plant when he encountered a closed gate and came to a stop. The rear of the trailer was on the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks, police said. As...

Norfolk Southern Corp. could make Roanoke, Va. once again the crossroads of two major rail corridors. Robert Martinez, Norfolk Southern vice-president for business development, told the Roanoke Times on March 29 the railroad wants to upgrade its tracks southwest of Roanoke in the Interstate 81 corridor. That alone would be a change from the railroad’s focus for the past 15 years. If the tracks were upgraded, NS could capture more of the business of shipping container freight from the Southeast to the Northeast and possibly slow the growth of truck traffic. The railroad also wants to improve its east-west corridor...

Posted on Tue, Sep. 02, 2003 Boy sleeping on railroad tracks dies after being struck by trainAssociated Press DOUGLASSVILLE, Pa. - A 12-year-old boy who fell asleep on railroad tracks died after being struck by an oncoming freight train.Matthew D. Jacobs was killed Saturday morning by a Norfolk-Southern engine that was crossing through Amity Township in Berks County, police said. He apparently woke up as the train was approaching, but was unable to move away in time.Jacobs and another boy, Ryan Radermacher, 15, ran away from a foster home last week and had been hitching rides on trains, officials...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Norfolk Southern Corp. could shave 667 miles off freight travel between Virginia and Ohio if railroad tunnels along the way were enlarged to accommodate double-stacked containers, the Rahall Transportation Institute said. Most of the 28 tunnels between Norfolk, Va., and Columbus, Ohio, are in West Virginia, but the Mountain State would not benefit as much as the other states from the project, according to a study released Monday by the institute. The study is part of a long-range effort to assess and improve the region's freight capabilities. Enlarging the tunnels, which...