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Rail-Car Maker to Open in Renovo

Posted on: Sunday, 4 September 2005, 12:00 CDT

Sep. 4--RENOVO -- Eighty years ago, the Clinton County borough of Renovo was a Pennsylvania Railroad town with 2,500 people working in the car shops.

A little bit of that heritage might be returning in the form of Renovo Rail Industries. The new company plans to lease one of the old shop buildings to modify and build rail cars.

Company President Walter Pogue and Wes Grand, chief operating officer of the Clinton County Economic Partnership, are optimistic about the business.

The Clinton County Economic Partnership owns the land the new company will lease and then buy.

"There's a lot of potential there," Grand said of the $5 million project.

"Renovo has the best labor force and the best location to build cars," Pogue added.

Several help-wanted advertisements have produced more than 200 job applications, Grand said.

Pogue, who has been contacting potential customers for more than a year, said one wants Renovo Rail to expand the capacity of 210 coal gondolas. The cars will become available starting in November, so the company has to be in operation by then, he said.

Renovo Rail also will build high-sided gondolas that would transport waste and construction debris and cars that can carry 20- and 40-foot containers, said Pogue, who was president of Berwick Forge and Foundry when it built 10,000 rail cars in its Renovo satellite operation between 1969 and 1983.

In the same shops between 1989 and 1993, the defunct Berwick Freight Car Co. developed a car to carry waste similar to what Renovo Rail plans to build, he said.

The chief investor in the new company has been identified as Renovo native Gene Sockman, who retired on June 30 as manager of manufacturing services for Krispy Kreme but was retained as a consultant.

Management of Renovo Rail will be provided under contract by P&K Rail, a rail-car brokering firm in Kennett Square operated by Pogue and George Kirwan of Huntington, W.Va. Combined, Pogue and Kirwan have more than 100 years of experience in the freight car business.

The prospect of a new railroad business has a lot of people talking about the old days, said Hyner resident Terry O'Connor, who is considered an expert on the rail heritage of Renovo. His great-grandfather, John Green, helped build the first locomotive frame in 1878.

Renovo Rail will operate from a building that dates to the 1890s and is one of the few remaining in the old Pennsylvania Railroad car and engine shop complex. It still contains overhead cranes, but they will need work to become operable, Grand said.

The first shops were built in the early 1860s, said O'Connor, who returned to Clinton County after retiring from teaching history at Millersburg High School and later in Erie. Employment decreased from the 2,500 peak in the early 1920s but jumped up during World War II and the Korean Conflict, he said.

Today, a few Norfolk Southern trains pass through town, and the tracks around the car shops need to be fixed, Pogue said. A walkway over the tracks between the business district and car shops was demolished several years ago.

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Source: The Patriot-News

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