Csx

I was pleased to have an opportunity to attend a recent public meeting focused on the new CSX facility. Being very aware of some residents' vocal opposition to the rail stop, I was interested to learn of the impacts this station would have on communities immediately surrounding the site. Not only did I learn that the new facility could bring thousands of jobs to our county, I was also surprised by a noise simulator, which replicated what people close to the site would hear. The noise was faint.

The most controversial of four proposed sites for a Baltimore-area center for transferring cargo between trucks and trains carries the lowest cost estimate, while one that has virtually no close neighbors would cost nearly twice as much, according to officials of CSX and the Maryland Department of Transportation. But during a news briefing Tuesday at the agency's headquarters, the officials offered assurances that while all of the locations remain in the running, none is favored over the others.

The driver of a flatbed truck was injured Friday morning when his vehicle collided with a CSX train on Joppa Road in Harford County, police said. The driver was trying to cross the tracks at about 9:30 a.m. when the train struck his truck near the rear side, said Capt. Keith Warner of the Harford County sheriff's office. Joppa Road was closed between U.S. 40 and Maryland 7 for about four hours. The train, which was traveling at about 40 mph, pushed the truck down the tracks about 20 yards, Warner said.

WOODBINE - The State Highway Administration will assist CSX railroad in closing a section of Route 97 (Old Washington Road) in Carroll County beginning Monday, Nov. 7. The closure is expected to last a week, and is being made to allow CSX crews to repair asphalt and concrete areas around the tracks. The roadway will reopen on Monday, Nov. 14 - weather and work-permitting, SHA officials said. Crews will close both directions of Route 97 at the CSX crossing north of Interstate 70 at the Carroll/Howard line.

Our state stands at the brink of a remarkable economic opportunity - and so do the tens of thousands of people whose jobs are related to the Port of Baltimore. In less than three years, an expanded Panama Canal is scheduled to open, permitting significantly larger cargo ships to pass through and come up the East Coast. And, thanks to the foresight of Gov. Martin O'Malley and his team at the Maryland Department of Transportation, our state will be ready as soon as next August, when dredging is completed on a deeper, 50-foot channel into the port.

Ten years ago Monday, scenes out of Baltimore gripped the nation and much of the world when a CSX freight train carrying hazardous cargo derailed and caught fire in the century-old tunnel that winds below downtown. For a week much downtown activity stopped. Three Orioles games at nearby Camden Yards were canceled. Freight rail traffic along the East Coast was paralyzed. Temperatures in the tunnel rose as high as 1,500 degrees as a witches' brew of chemicals burned alongside paper and pulp products, and smoke poured from the openings.

John Andrew Moag Sr., a retired CSX executive who volunteered at St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church and the Franciscan Sisters, died Tuesday from complications of a stroke at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The Blakehurst retirement community resident was 80. Born in Detroit and raised in Chicago, Mr. Moag was a 1949 graduate of St. Norbert High School in DePere, Wis. He served in the Army in Heidelberg, Germany, in internal affairs and, after being discharged in 1954, went to work in the mailroom of the Illinois Central Railroad in Chicago.

After years of complicated negotiations between Baltimore officials and the CSX railroad company, the city is moving to replace two badly deteriorating bridges that have been the target of neighbors' complaints since at least the 1990s. The city approved a detailed construction agreement Wednesday, clearing the way for bids on the Sinclair Lane and Fort Avenue bridges that span CSX tracks — projects expected to cost a combined $10 million to $20 million. The company will pay 75 percent of the cost, and the city will contribute the rest.

Fighting City Hall is never easy, but Elkridge residents are getting high marks for their quick ability to organize to try to fend off a possible site for a major rail cargo transfer facility in their community. There is a lot at stake on both sides in a decision that puts a community's view of its future welfare in the context of a major economic project, backed by the O'Malley administration and CSX railroad, that could determine the future of Maryland's chief port. The widening of the Panama Canal will allow ever-larger container ships from Asia to reach the East Coast, and officials with the port of Baltimore want to be able to cash in. To do that, CSX must be able to double-stack 40-foot-long steel cargo containers on rail cars headed to the Midwest, but Baltimore's antiquated Howard Street Tunnel isn't big enough to accommodate such traffic.