The opening of CXS’s intermodal terminal in Northwest Ohio clears the way for rail shipments from East Coast ports to the Midwest.By Karen E. Thuermer, AJOTBlow your train whistles! CSX’s Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal is running full steam ahead. Shippers can now take advantage of yet another intermodal rail terminal that offers efficiencies and speed to markets in the Midwest and beyond. In June, CSX Transportation celebrated the grand opening of its Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal, located in North Baltimore, Ohio between Findlay and Toledo. It’s one of several terminals in CSX’s public-private partnership National Gateway project with the federal government that will ultimately clear 61 obstructions, thereby allowing CSX to run double-stack rail, and build and expand six intermodal facilities within CSX’s network. That network expands North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Washington, D.C. “We run about 26 trains daily in and out of the terminal and do about 1,500 lifts a day,” Drew Glassman, CSX assistant vice president of Intermodal marketing, revealed to this AJOT reporter in a telephone interview upon his return from the new terminal that same day. He expects those amounts to be more once the entire National Gateway system is fully up and running, and CSX moves from a point-to-point network to one that operates like a hub and spoke. “This will allow to us to add hundreds of connection points across our network,” Glassman explained. “Before, where we may not have been able to run full trains from a point like Columbus and different points across the network, we are now able to have a whole train load from Northwest Ohio go to points in the Ohio Valley and beyond.” Glassman described the network as akin to what air carriers like FedEx or Delta have been doing with their systems for years. “If you fly into Delta’s Atlanta hub, for example, you can go anywhere,” he said. FedEx’s use of Memphis is another example. CSX offers a similar concept in which, through its northern tier, shippers can utilize hubs at its Chambersburg, PA; Syracuse, NY, and Northwest Ohio terminals and spring smaller trainloads to other markets. “What this means to CSX customers is an improvement to connectivity and efficiency,” he said. “Once you get into Northwest Ohio you can get access to our entire network. We can build high density trains that can be sent out West as far as California, and do the reverse when shipments come East.” When the railroad has enough density of cargo for a particular route, it can still run a full train point-to-point. What the National Gateway initiative offers the CSX network is the ability to add double stack capacity from mid Atlantic ports into the Ohio valley via Northwest Ohio. Seaport and By Pass Connections The Port of Baltimore is part of the National Gateway initiative, where a new CSX intermodal terminal is also scheduled to be built between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to offer better connectivity to its domestic system. Whereas today, CSX serves nine different markets from its network from the Port of Baltimore (in addition to connecting to the western railroads), when the National Gateway is fully implemented and all services are phased in, CSX will be able to service nine additional markets and 80 million additional consumers that are not rail served out of the Port of Baltimore today. Those markets, and phase in periods are: Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis, and Buffalo, 2012; Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, and Pittsburgh, 2014. While CSX has a large presence with the Ports of Savannah and Charleston, these Ports do not connect as well through the National Gateway. “They tend to be more Atlantic-centric in the South,” Glassman said. But Glassman stresses how important the Port of New York and New Jersey is to its network since it operates as CSX’s biggest import-export port out of the East Coast. This is significant si