HillTopExpress.com

Get ready to stop for more trains and longer ones, now that the railroad construction is done and more off-loading facilities have been completed on the western end of the railroad.

The Nashville and Eastern Railroad Corporation (NERC) has been running around one train with 12 sand cars per week for the last couple of months. Bill Drunsic, NERC operator, told members of the Nashville and Eastern Rail Authority, at their meeting in Lebanon last week, that they are beginning to run two trains. Last week’s train had 14 loaded sand cars on its return trip. Drunsic said that he is getting his train crews used to handling more cars a little at a time. He said they hoped to work up to over 20 cars.

Drunsic said that the once the construction of the Hermitage off-loading site is done in the next week or so, there will also be more trains. He said that the Lebanon off-loading site had been getting the one train load of sand each week, but the Hermitage facility will soon get at least two per week.

Right now, if the train starts in Lebanon, it takes about four hours to make the trip to the sand plant in Monterey; and about two hours to load. The railroad crew said that it takes about the same amount of time to unload. If they don’t have to stop and pick up or drop off something else, its a 12-hour round trip. Each sand car holds around 100 tons.

Drunic told NERA members that another project in the works may soon equal the vast amount of tonnage of sand coming from the mountain. He said that Rogers Group is in advanced discussions with landowners at a site located on the south side of Lebanon Pike near Cauley Ave., in Nashville, to lease up to 12 acres of land for a stockpile operation of various aggregate products being produced as by-product of the zinc mine in Gordonsville. They anticipate closing on a lease agreement, shortly. Once a “letter of intent” is signed, the railroad will run a minimum of 150,000 tons per year from Gordonsville to Nashville, by sometime in October.