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Railroad Helps Others Gain Steam

Posted on: Tuesday, 2 May 2006, 12:00 CDT

By Ray Reed, The Roanoke Times, Va.

May 2--One of the ways Norfolk Southern Railway grows its business is by helping other industries build plants and stores near its tracks, and last year was particularly good.

Seventy-eight new industries found locations with the railroad's help last year across its 22-state system.

In Western Virginia the railroad played a key role in four projects in recent years, said Dan Motley, industrial development manager for Norfolk Southern in Roanoke.

The first step in his job is separating the likely customers from those who are less likely.

"We have suspects and we have prospects," Motley said.

Prospects that turned out well in Western Virginia in recent years included the Gatorade drink, trucking companies and plastics manufacturers who will be Norfolk Southern customers.

One venture on Motley's prospect list is an emerging use of limestone for a cleaner-burning fuel mix in coal-fired power plants. In this effort, the railroad is more than a supporting player.

Because coal is involved, NS could be seen as its own customer in a technology that both prevents the release of air pollution and enhances the continued use of a fuel that provides 40 percent of the railroad's revenue.

Growth in the clean-coal concept depends on using limestone with high calcium content, which is found in some locations in the Shenandoah Valley, Roanoke and Bluefield regions served by Norfolk Southern.

Motley said the railroad hopes that two limestone sites can be brought into service, and a couple of inactive quarries may come back into use.

A booming economy boosted the development efforts of NS in 2005, and 43 existing industries expanded in addition to the ones that built new plants, a railroad news release said.

In Southwest Virginia, the railroad's development office had a role in four projects in recent years that Motley was free to talk about, including a Gatorade plant and a bottling plant in Wythe County's Progress Park industrial site. Nearly 400 jobs could be created at the two plants.

A third company, Lane Enterprises, which manufactures drainage pipe, also announced plans to move into the Wythe County park.

NS also played a role in relocating three Roanoke businesses out of the biomedical park development at Jefferson Street and Reserve Avenue. Two of them, Mennel Milling and a trucking company, chose new sites in the Starkey area of Roanoke County. Another trucking company, Pitzer Transfer, moved to Salem.

Rocky Mount also benefited from NS' efforts the past three years, gaining two plastics manufacturers and a building-supply store that are served by rail.

Several of those efforts required two years or more of work by NS and the companies.

The technical services division of NS participated in several site plans for Mennel Milling before it settled on the Starkey location, Motley said.

Rocky Mount got some industrial recovery with NS' help. After Standard Register and Lane Furniture Industries closed operations in the past five years, the railroad helped Trinity Packaging Corp. move into the old Standard Register building.

MW Manufacturers, the town's largest employer, moved a plastics-component operation into one of the old Lane buildings with some collaboration with the railroad, Motley said.

While trucking and manufacturing companies connect with the products and jobs that are typical in Southwest Virginia, a new use for limestone may be cutting-edge stuff.

Limestone can be used in two ways to clean up coal emissions from power plants.

In one of them, a process called fluidized-bed combustion burns a mixture of coal and crushed limestone.

Limestone absorbs sulfur and nitrous oxide during the burning process, forming a byproduct that resembles gypsum and can be used to make wallboard.

Fluidized-bed combustion can be used in new power plants, which have been coming online slowly in U.S. utility companies since the 1980s.

Another way of using limestone to clean up emissions is called flue-gas desulfurization. A system of scrubbers sprays finely ground limestone into the flue chamber of a coal-burning plant, absorbing sulfur and nitrous oxide from flue gases before they are released into the atmosphere.

But whether the callers want to talk about new technology or existing products, Motley's Blackberry communications device buzzes constantly.

"Nowadays when people call, they're usually serious about doing a project," Motley said. "Only about 20 percent of calls are suspects now."

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To see more of The Roanoke Times, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.roanoke.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Roanoke Times, Va.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

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Source: The Roanoke Times

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