By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — CSX Corp. announced last week a $59 million intermodal freight terminal expansion is under way in Columbus, which is good news for companies moving freight to the Eastern seaboard – and great news for soybean growers in Ohio.

This terminal expansion is part of the National Gateway initiative, linking deepwater East Coast ports with Midwest markets.

The overall project covers six states (Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania) and the District of Columbia and includes rail capacity enhancements and intermodal terminal capacity improvements.
This terminal is the latest link in a transportation network owned by CSX, of Jacksonville, Fla., designed to speed up transportation for agricultural and other products. Earlier this year, CSX opened the cornerstone of the National Gateway, a new $175 million intermodal terminal, in Baltimore in northwestern Ohio.

That terminal (in Wood County) is a boon for area soybean growers. Eleven percent of Ohio’s soybeans are grown within a 25-mile radius of the terminal and 31 percent are grown within a 50-mile radius.

Similarly, growers of soybeans and other crops in central Ohio will find this latest addition to the National Gateway initiative to their benefit. Northwestern Ohio remains home to the largest growing region of soybeans in the state, but Columbus and other parts of central Ohio is its second-largest soybean-growing region.

“Transportation certainly is an important issue for Ohio soybean farmers, and specifically when it comes to rail transportation because specialty beans like these are already transported using rail containers,” said Jamie Butts, Ohio Soybean Council communications manager. “Now they’re able to utilize double-stack cars and that could mean the shipment of more beans.”

CSX purchased the 31 acres in January for $7.1 million.

The land is near its Buckeye Yard intermodal facility, where freight containers are moved between trucks and trains. The Columbus work, including a 200,000 square-foot warehouse, is expected to create 400 construction jobs.
“This investment will not only create construction jobs now, but it will allow central Ohio companies to expand operations and hire workers,” said U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in a press release.

The terminal expansion in Columbus includes a redesign of the site footprint, installation and realignment of tracks, reconfiguration of inbound and outbound truck gates, additional on-site parking and three high-tech, rail-mounted electric wide-spread cranes.

Dan Keen, an economist with the Assoc. of American Railroads, said trains are generally about four times more fuel-efficient than trucks. On average, he said, a train can move a ton of freight nearly 500 miles on a single gallon of fuel and can carry the load of more than 280 trucks.

Keen also said container shipments are more efficient because they can be stacked two-high on many trains, which may be music to the ears of soybean growers in the state.