November 13, 2003 (614) 644-0306

COLUMBUS – The Ohio Rail Development Commission (ORDC) today approved a $400,000 loan to the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway (W&LE) that will be used to preserve a 16-mile segment of its Valley Line.

James E. Seney, Executive Director of the ORDC, said without the loan, the W&LE would have abandoned the segment, which goes from Warrenton, in Jefferson County, to 3.5 miles north of Adena, in Harrison County.

Seney said the line is the most efficient way to handle rail traffic originating or terminating on the W&LE’s River Line, which serves several Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation plants and the Rayland Docks on the Ohio River, where coal is loaded onto barges. Seney said an alternate line is not suitable for handling unit trains of coal.

In the past three years, the ORDC has given the W&LE $306,810 in grants for different improvements along the Valley Line. In 1991, the Ohio Department of Transportation’s rail division, the predecessor of the ORDC, helped the W&LE get $571,085 in federal funds to improve the line.

Seney said there are a number of potential uses for the Valley Line. He said eastern Ohio coal companies could transport coal over it to the Rayland Docks on the Ohio River or to the Cardinal Operating power plant in Brilliant. Seney said CSX Transportation, Inc. might use it at a short cut between West Virginia and its east-west Chicago-New York mainline in northern Ohio.

"Because its strategic location and importance to Ohio’s economy, the ORDC could not afford to allow the Valley Line to be abandoned," said James E. Betts, Chairman of the ORDC.