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Subject: Railroads Plan Truck-Train Joint Venture; Norfolk Southern, Conrail in Deal<By
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 04:44:31 EST
Message-ID: <11.1992Nov19.044432@AmeriCast.com>

Railroads Plan Truck-Train Joint Venture; Norfolk Southern, Con-
rail in Deal<By Don Phillips=Washington Post Staff Writer=

Norfolk Southern Corp. and Consolidated Rail Corp. (Conrail) yes-
terday announced plans to combine their truck-train intermodal
services in a subsidiary designed to recapture business between
the Northeast, Southeast and Midwest now handled by trucking com-
panies.

 The planned new subsidiary - to be called Triple Crown, the name
now used by Norfolk Southern's intermodal subsidiary - is
designed to compete not only with traditional over-the-road
trucking operations, but also with growing truck-rail partner-
ships in which trucking companies place large numbers of trailers
on railroad flatcars for long portions of their trips.  Increas-
ingly, trucking companies such as J.B. Hunt Transport Services
and Schneider International use rail for almost all long hauls,
while using highways only for local pickup and delivery. Most
railroads have been content to let the trucking companies provide
this kind of service, since it has provided good business for
rail carriers.

 But some in the rail industry have  expressed fear that the ar-
rangement puts truckers in near total charge of merchandise
traffic. Triple Crown is the only major domestic intermodal sub-
sidiary that is entirely controlled by railroads.

 A joint Norfolk Southern-Conrail statement said the railroads
will continue to haul freight provided by truck-rail partnerships
and third-party retailers. Conrail last summer announced a
partnership with J.B. Hunt to handle traffic between New York and
Chicago, which will be a direct competitor with Triple Crown.
"Every year, we lose considerable revenue to the highways," said
a statement from David R. Goode, chairman of Norfolk Southern,
and James A. Hagen, chairman of Conrail. "A combined NS-Conrail
intermodal venture will permit our carriers to compete at the re-
tail level, placing traffic now moving via highway onto the two
railroads."

 The three initial Triple Crown corridors will be New York-
Chicago, Chicago-Atlanta and New York-Atlanta, traffic lanes with
large volumes of truck traffic.

 To upgrade the New York-Atlanta rail line, the railroads plan a
$16 million program to increase clearances to allow use of
double-stack container trains. These highly efficient trains, in
which containers are stacked two-deep, are extensively used in
the West and Midwest, but have been restricted in the East by
tight clearances.

 The New York-Atlanta route bypasses Washington. Shipments will
move via Conrail to Harrisburg, Pa., then over Norfolk Southern
via Front Royal, Va., Manassas and Charlotte, N.C., to Atlanta.

 As traffic increases, this will mean more trains between Front
Royal and Manassas, an area of high-priced farms and homes that
until a few years ago was a one-train-a-day branch line. Local
real estate developers have complained in the past about the ex-
tra trains shifted to that line when Amtrak insisted that Conrail
take freight trains off the Washington-New York Northeast Corri-
dor.

02:07 11-19C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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