Rail Yard

NEW YORK -- Several of the kidnappers who imprisoned tuxedo mogul Harvey Weinstein in a Manhattan rail yard pit tried to escape on a Monday morning flight to the Dominican Republic, abandoning their victim to die, police said yesterday.But the 11 a.m. flight never left John F. Kennedy Airport as scheduled because of a tropical storm in the Caribbean country."They were ready to go," said Capt. George Duke, commander of the New York City Police Department's Major Case Squad.And, he said, all signs indicated that the kidnappers intended to leave their multimillionaire captive in the pit after receiving a $3 million ransom in duffel bags from Mr. Weinstein's family.

The Mediterranean Shipping Co. will increase by several thousand containers the cargo it moves through the port of Baltimore under an agreement announced yesterday with the Maryland Port Administration.The agreement gives the company special rates for cargo moved through the Seagirt Marine Terminal to and from southern and western destinations. The increased business in the port stems largely from improved rail service at the 2-year-old Seagirt terminal.Last year, the CSX Corp., one of two major railroads serving Baltimore, opened a rail yard at Seagirt as it closed its Potomac Yards facilities in Alexandria, Va. That will enable companies like Mediterranean to ship more cheaply by rail directly from the port, rather than trucking cargo first to Alexandria.

Any day now, Sykesville's model railroad museum could pull into town.The museum, a one-time parlor car built by the Pullman Co. in 1910, is to arrive by rail on the train that services the Old Main Line daily from Baltimore.In April, the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore offered Sykesville an 80-foot-long Pullman car for $1 a year as a "most appropriate home" for Sykesville's $10,000 model collection, said John Ott, director of the embryonic museum.Before that car could be brought to town, vandals destroyed it."

In a bid to tap into a resurgence in the urban retail market, a Connecticut-based developer wants to build the city's first "big box" shopping center on a former rail yard in Port Covington, an estimated $50 million project that could bring up to 600 jobs. Starwood Ceruzzi is proposing a 400,000-square-foot waterfront center anchored by two warehouse-style superstores on Cromwell Street in South Baltimore, the company said yesterday. The developer has a contract with CSX Corp. to purchase about 45 acres on part of a peninsula east of Hanover Street, but has not yet closed the deal, Ken Goldberg, a Starwood Ceruzzi senior vice president, said yesterday.

NEW YORK -- For nearly 30 years, drivers on the Bronx side of the Triborough Bridge have gazed at the monuments of Manhattan, their view unimpeded by the abandoned rail yard on either side of them.But smack in the middle of that rail yard, the southernmost point of the South Bronx, construction is scheduled to begin this year on an audacious, first-of-its-kind building that promises to be a New York landmark.This new monument is a paper-recycling mill unlike any other.The lead developer is one of the nation's best known environmental-advocacy groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is urging CSX Transportation to find a site in the city for its multi-million dollar cargo transfer center rather than look for a site in suburbs to the south. In a letter to CSX President and CEO Michael J. Ward released Thursday, the mayor said she was "deeply troubled" that plans for the Baltimore-Washington Rail Intermodal Facility have stalled and expressed concern that if a new rail yard was not completed soon, "economic opportunity will pass us by. " The truck-to-rail center would allow CSX to bypass the narrow, century-old Howard Street tunnel beneath the city and double-stack containers trucked from the Port of Baltimore onto freight trains.

Levant Line, a Greek-owned steamship company providing service to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, has decided to move its port of call in the mid-Atlantic area from Richmond, Va., to Baltimore."

Hoping to solve the 2-year-old mystery of how several contaminants turned up in Fort Meade's ground water wells, Army officials are installing more monitoring wells near the base's boundary. Fort Meade's environmental office hopes the five wells it installed Thursday near Old Waugh Chapel Road and Piney Orchard Parkway will help determine why a well on the post documented elevated levels of benzene and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. Benzene and PCBs are industrial chemicals that can pose a cancer risk to humans and cause other health problems.

The Port of Baltimore has had its share of blows over the past few years but now the momentum is swinging the other way, with Baltimore on the offensive. Maersk Line, the port's most important customer, gave Baltimore a huge vote of confidence this week when it signed a 10-year lease to continue doing business here. The port's long-term strategy seems to be working.Key to the port's success is the state of the art Seagirt Marine Terminal. Already, one of the world's largest steamship companies, Orient Overseas Container Line, has decided to return to Baltimore to take advantage of Seagirt's ultra-modern facilities speeding cargo handling.

Soros loses top-earner titleHungarian-born financier George Soros was toppled as the highest earner on Wall Street last year for the first time in four years, according to a survey conducted by Financial World magazine.Mr. Soros earned $70 million in 1994, a sharp fall from the $1.1 billion he took home in 1993, the magazine said, previewing an article in its July 4 issue.The new leader on Wall Street was Tom Lee, the leveraged buyout king who made most of his $170 million when he sold Snapple Beverage to Quaker Oats.