GVT Provides Needed Rail

By Tom Rivers
Daily News Staff Writer


The tide is turning for an Orleans County railroad after 10 years of eking out an existence.

The new ethanol plant in Shelby will prove a big benefactor for the Falls Road Railroad, a 45-mile line that runs from Lockport through Orleans County and to Brockport. Right now the railroad moves fewer than 1,000 cars a year. The ethanol plant will boost traffic by about 5,000 cars annually with all the corn being hauled to the plant and the ethanol and dried distiller's grains being sent out of Shelby, said leaders of the Genesee Valley Transportation Company, owner of the railroad.

Ten years ago GVT purchased the railroad from Conrail. At the time, GVT leaders expected they could boost revenues and rail traffic 10 to 15 percent a year by offering customers better service than the former operator.

But then, like dominoes, customers on the line closed down, making the railroad barely viable, said David Monte Verde, president of GVT, which is based in Batavia.

The line has lost Mattel in Medina, Kleen Brite in Brockport and International Multi-Foods in Gasport, and only has a few remaining customers.

GVT expects to move 86,000* gross tons of product this year on the line. In 2008, the first full year the ethanol plant will be on line GVT predicts it will move 638,000 tons of material on the Falls Road, Monte Verde said.

Western New York Energy, owner of the new plant, expects a 65-car shipment of corn every five or six days. The company will use about 20 million bushels of corn each year. Local producers are expected to grow about 6 million of these bushels. The rest will come from the Midwest by rail.

GVT's ability to keep the railroad open was critical for the town of Shelby and Orleans County to land the $87 million project. The plant will create 50 to 60 jobs for the ethanol plant, plus another 25 to 35 for an expected carbon dioxide facility that will capture CO2 and sell it to the soda and flash freezing industries.

"Without the railroad there wouldn't have been a project," said Gabrielle Barone, director of business development for the Orleans Economic Development Agency.

The OEDA acquired land for the beginning of a railroad spur that runs from the tracks along Route 31 back about a mile to the plant. Western New York Energy has cleared 31 acres of woodlands to make room for the tracks to extend to its plant at the corner of 31A and Bates Road.

The state is providing $3.1 million in Multi-Modal funding to support the rail line construction, as well as the acquisition of rail car loading equipment. The money also will help with the costs of land clearing and grading. The OEDA also is eligible to apply to the state Department of Transportation for up to $435,000 in a combination grant and low-interest loan through the Industrial Access Program.

GVT in 1997 received $1.2 million in Multi-Modal funding, which was used to repair 29 railroad crossings as well as other track upgrades. Monte Verde credited former state Assemblyman Charles Nesbitt and state Sen. George Maziarz for helping GVT get that money.

"They had faith in us," Monte Verde said Wednesday while watching the rail spur construction. "Without those improvements (in 1997) this would have become a dirt bike trail."

Monte Verde and GVT have five other railroads. The company has about 300 miles of rail lines in upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania. Monte Verde has said it has been challenging running the company in recent years because many of the upstate companies have shut down.

The ethanol plant is a needed step in the other direction, more than making up for the losses on the Falls Road Railroad, he said.

Shelby Town Supervisor Skip Draper said a busier railroad will be good for the local economy.

"Western New York needs a pulse and whenever trains come down those tracks it will be a sign Western New York still has a pulse," Draper said.