THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 24, 1996 TAG: 9608260330
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 33 lines
Norfolk Southern Corp. has begun a new dedicated daily train to speed shipments of paper and clay between the Southeast and the Midwest.
The Norfolk-based railroad announced the new seven-day-a-week train Friday.
It will run between Chattanooga, Tenn., and Wisconsin with crews from the Wisconsin Central Ltd. taking over in Chicago.
The new train will carry only paper products and clay, said Richard Kiley, Norfolk Southern manager of business development.
Demand in the market and a desire to take business away from trucks with a faster service prompted Norfolk Southern to establish the service, Kiley said.
``We had a natural set of origins in the Southeast shipping to a natural set of destinations on the Wisconsin Central,'' he said.
Norfolk Southern serves more than 40 paper mills in Georgia, Florida and Alabama. Shipments from those plants and from the clay fields of Georgia are gathered at its rail yard in Chattanooga. Clay is used in the production of fine papers like those used in magazines and books.
In the past, paper and clay moved as part of mixed merchandise, on trains that had to be switched at various Norfolk Southern rail yards and between railroads around Chicago, a time-consuming process.
The new service runs largely uninterrupted and will travel to Chicago from Chattanooga in 34 hours and continue on the Wisconsin Central, arriving in Fond du Lac, Wisc., 11 1/2 hours later.
The train will be called ``Pacer'' for Paper and Clay Expedited Runthrough. It will average 50 to 70 cars a day, Kiley said.
KEYWORDS: NORFOLK SOUTHERN by CNB