Creation of independent rail service eyed at TRIC

The developers of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center are moving ahead with plans to launch a railroad to serve industrial clients within the sprawling project east of Sparks.

The thinking: An independent railroad might be able to provide better service than the Union Pacific, which operates tracks across the north side of the property.

And better rail service, in turn, could provide an advantage as the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center competes with locations throughout the West to land big industrial users.

The alternative, says Vince Griffith, president of Reno Engineering Corp., is continued reliance on Union Pacific locomotives and crews to haul cars around the 104,000-acre industrial park.

Griffith's firm, which has been involved with work ranging from road construction to wastewater treatment at the center, has found itself deep in discussion with Union Pacific executives at the railroad's headquarters in Omaha.

Expecting to be greeted with open arms by the railroad the industrial center's tenants, after all, will generate freight industrial park executives instead found they needed to clear numerous hoops to ensure rail service from the Union Pacific.

"For a new development such as this, they were very skeptical," Griffith recalls.

The biggest issue: Even when the first scattered industrial buildings were beginning to arise at the center, the Union Pacific insisted that tracks be built to handle the full amount traffic that's expected when the center is completely built out.

That meant, for instance, construction of four sets of tracks outside the James Hardie Building Products plant.

And it meant that Tahoe Reno Industrial Center was required to invest heavily today in anticipation of a payoff that won't come for years.

Equally tricky was engineering railroad tracks through the hills of the industrial center a challenge that Griffith summarizes as moving tracks up steep grades within fairly short distances. Some cuts through hillsides are 60 feet deep; other depressions require 60 feet of fill.

"Everything we've built is to the Union Pacific standard," Griffith says. "I think they were surprised that we actually made it work."

Spurs from that track serve the James Hardie plant as well as a factory operated by Royal Sierra Extrusions. A newly built spur to a PPG plant that's under construction brings the total length of the railroad inside the industrial center to just over eight miles.

Now stretches of track are in place, industrial center developers Roger Norman and Lance Gilman are giving serious consideration to operating their own little railroad to move cars throughout the center.

They've dubbed their proposed short-line the Tahoe Reno Railroad.

With the help of Reno-based consultant Railroad Industries Inc., the developers won the approval of federal regulators to operate a railroad.

And a Google search by Griffith found numerous West Coast companies willing to buy a locomotive and hire experienced engineers to haul rail cars from the Union Pacific connection up to factories in the industrial center.

"It's been a huge learning curve for us," he says. "The Union Pacific has trained us well."