Norfolk Southern to reopen south central Pennsylvania intermodal facility

A photograph of a Norfolk Southern locomotive parked in a rail yard.

Norfolk Southern will reopen an intermodal facility in south central Pennsylvania in September in an effort to expand capacity, respond to market demand and alleviate congestion.

NS (NYSE: NSC) will conduct a phased reopening of the Franklin County Regional Intermodal Facility in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, starting Sept. 10.

NS will start with a lane of domestic intermodal traffic moving between facilities in Memphis, Tennessee, and Rutherford, Pennsylvania, located outside of Harrisburg. NS says Greencaslte will provide additional terminal capacity and help improve rail service amid growing demand, and the rise in e-commerce. Reopening the terminal should also reduce terminal congestion and improve network fluidity across Pennsylvania, NS said.

“With strong growth in volume driven by e-commerce and a recovering economy, we believe the timing is right to bring our Greencastle facility back online,” NS Chief Marketing Officer Alan Shaw said.

“We are excited about the new opportunities that this reopening provides for us and for our business partners across Pennsylvania and beyond. We are collaborating with our customers to support their business needs, offering shippers a more sustainable transportation solution and a commitment to best-in-class service,” Shaw said.

The Greencastle terminal can conduct an estimated 100,000 shipping container lifts annually. The first phase of traffic at the reopened terminal is expected to generate around 50,000 lifts, NS said. The rail carrier defines a lift as the movement of a container onto or off a rail car.

The Greencastle facility opened in January 2013 and was part of NS’ Crescent Corridor initiative, a public-private partnership aimed at highway conversion. Other intermodal terminals constructed as part of the initiative were terminals in Birmingham in Alabama, Charlotte in North Carolina; and Memphis, all part of a 2,500-mile rail corridor from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast. The terminal was idled in 2019 “for business reasons, while leaving open the opportunity of resuming operations if market conditions changed,” NS said.

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