Norfolk Southern opens Heartland Corridor

Norfolk Southern opens Heartland Corridor    Norfolk Southern opened its Heartland Corridor on Thursday with a ceremony at the recently enlarged Cowan Tunnel near Radford, Va., with a doublestack container train pulling 200 containers to the Midwest.
   “Demand for rail freight service in the U.S. is expected to nearly double by 2035, and that’s on a national transportation network that everyone agrees already is sorely stressed,' said Wick Moorman, the railroad’s chief executive officer, at the event. 'As recently as several years ago, the crystal ball was too cloudy to provide a roadmap for meeting the coming challenges. Now, the Heartland Corridor provides a clear and workable vision of the way forward.”
   The Heartland Corridor, which involved raising vertical clearances on 28 tunnels and removing 24 overhead obstacles on one of Norfolk Southern’s main lines connecting the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest, was funded as a public-private partnership between the railroad, the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and the federal government.
   The railroad said it would improve transit time from Norfolk, Va., to Chicago from four days to three and is nearly 250 miles shorter than previous circuitous routes.