Short Line Rail: Its Role in Intermodalism and Distribution

Miami
IHB's industrial traffic consists of 38% primary metals, 12% chemicals &
petroleum products, 11% food products, 8% scrap iron, 7% coal & coke, 6%
whole grain, as well as a variety of other products including lumber, paper, and
aggregates. The IHB also operates as an intermediate switch carrier between the
12 trunk-line railroads for traffic interchanged between them in Chicago,
generating an additional 475,000 revenue cars (http://www.ihbrr.com/;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Harbor_Belt_Railroad).
In contrast to Chicago, in Miami there is only one regional/short line railroad that serves
the metropolitan area, the Florida East Coast Railway.
Florida East Coast Railway (FEC)
The Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) operates 351 miles of mainline track along
the east coast of Florida. FEC interchanges with two Class I carriers, NS and
CSXT. FEC is owned by RailAmerica, Inc., an owner and operator of over 40
regional and short line railroads in the U.S. and Canada. RailAmerica is
headquartered in Jacksonville, FL.
FEC moves major carload commodities of aggregate, automobiles, lumber, farm
products, food and kindred, machinery, pulp and paper, petroleum products, and
stone, clay and glass.
The FEC operations are dominated by intermodal trains and unit rock (limestone)
trains. The intermodal traffic includes interline shipments off CSX and Norfork
Southern, participation in EMP container service operated by UP and Norfork
Southern, UPS piggback trailers, trailers going to the WalMart distribution center
at Ft. Pierce, and import containers through the ports of Miami, Port Everglades
(Ft. Lauderdale)[the principal source of imports], Port of Palm Beach/Lake Worth
Inlet, and Port Canaveral [minor, of no real consequence]. In addition, FEC
offers "Hurricane Service." This provides trucking companies the opportunity of
having their trailers piggybacked out of Jacksonville to save the expensive cost of
back-hauling empty trailers. The rock trains come out of the FEC yard at Medley,
just west of Hialeah in the "Lake Belt" area of Dade and Broward Counties
principally for materials dealers Titan and Rinker.
The FEC also hauls normal manifest freight to and from points along its right of
way. These cars are hauled on whatever train is going that way, so intermodal
and rock trains routinely have manifest cars in their consists. Additionally, the
FEC currently transports Tropicana Products' "Juice Train" cars to and from the
company's processing facility just west of Fort Pierce, Florida on the "K Line."
FEC freight trains operate on precise schedules. Trains are not held for missed
connections or late loadings. Most of the trains are paired so that they leave
simultaneously from their starting points and meet halfway through the run and
swap crews.
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