advertisement

---

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced it finalized a $6.8 million Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery II grant that will help fund a freight-rail project supporting the Marcellus Shale natural gas deposits in Pennsylvania.
 
The project calls for upgrading 200 miles of track and rehabilitating bridges along lines in in Lycoming, Centre, Blair and Northumberland counties that are operated by North Shore Railroad Co.-owned short lines.

Meanwhile, Genesee & Wyoming Inc. (GWI) subsidiary Rail Link Inc. recently received the Wyoming Governor’s Award for safety and health in the large mine-site contractor category. The award recognizes a Wyoming employer’s commitment to excellence in workplace safety and health.

Rail Link loads more than 400 million tons of coal annually at more than one dozen Wyoming and Montana mines in the Powder River Basin, where the company employs 160 people. At mine sites, Rail Link employees receive empty coal trains from railroads, operate them slowly through a mine’s loading stations and then hand back loaded trains to the railroads.

Last year, workers at Rail Link’s coal loading operations and GWI’s Utah Railway logged more than 445,000 manhours without a reportable injury.