The story behind the missing story (01/10/07)

Oops.

A bit of newsroom miscommunication last week may have had more than a few readers of The Commercial Review scratching their heads over the weekend.

It all started Thursday.

That was the day I heard train whistles in my office. It had been a long time since I'd heard train whistles in Portland on the old Norfolk Southern line, the one old timers still think of as the Nickel Plate. East-west train traffic through Portland has been a rarity for years. But with the development of the new ethanol plant southwest of town, it seemed the situation might change.

Then there were other indicators. We'd published a photo of train tracks in the snow about a week before, and Nellie Morrical had stopped by the office to ask if we knew why there were so many rail cars east of Portland.

Earlier in the year, I'd run into Andy Schemenaur who farms east of Portland who said the tracks and roadbed were getting new attention after years of neglect. Weeds had been sprayed, for instance.

It sounded very much as if increased rail traffic was on the way.

I was still thinking about the train whistles when I got a call from Roger Domingo. Roger's the pastor at Trinity United Methodist Church, and his wife June is a friend who goes back far more years than either of us would like to admit.

He'd noticed the same rail cars that Nellie had spotted.

Something was going on.

I mentioned to Mike Snyder that I thought there was a story and that I thought I could bring it together for Saturday.

Then I set out with a camera.

Driving through the gloom and drizzle, I zig-zagged back and forth from here to Fort Recovery.

There were rail cars, all right, about seven miles worth, interrupted now and then to allow for county road intersections.

I'm sure it's ethanol related, I told Mike. At the very least, an editorial or two would be needed to remind folks to be more careful at railroad crossings that had long been idle.

On Friday, with Mike still assuming he had a story for Saturday and teasing that story in Friday's paper, I started making phone calls.

Trouble is, the story didn't come together.

My understanding was that the R.J. Corman company controlled the tracks from the west side of Portland all the way east to Lima, Ohio. In fact, that's what the company's web site indicated.

So I called R.J. Corman.

Not surprisingly, the west Ohio office bounced me to the corporate public relations guy.

Surprisingly, he returned the call promptly and was a great help.

But he was as much in the dark as I was.

"Portland?" he said. "Where's Portland?"

I explained pretty quickly: We've noticed increased traffic this week on your rails, there's an ethanol plant under construction, and if there's going to be new traffic east through Portland we want to be able to alert our readers. Fair enough.

He said he'd call me back. The second surprise of the day was that he did just that. (Corporate PR types aren't known for calling back. It goes with the territory.)

"The ethanol plant's going to be in Greenville," he said.

That's a different ethanol plant, I said. There was no way to explain the abundance of budding ethanol plants in a short conversation.

I went over the little bit of information I had once again, and again he said he'd call me back. And he did.

"That's not our track," he said this time. "It's Norfolk Southern's."

He said Corman's line ended at Fort Recovery.

But, I explained, your web site says it's yours.

"Really?" he said.

We checked the web site, with me in Indiana and him in Kentucky.

Sure enough, there it was.

He was as puzzled as I was. Our best - and most likely - theory was that the line is owned by Norfolk Southern and leased by Corman through a "trackage" agreement.

He said he did find that a number of "foreign" rail cars, that is cars belonging to Norfolk Southern rather than to Corman were now located on the tracks.

"But they're in Fort Recovery," he insisted.

Well, sort of, I thought. They're stretched between Portland and Fort Recovery.

So, out of all this, do we know whether the Portland ethanol plant will be generating increased rail traffic to the east on the Corman-Norfolk Southern line to Fort Recovery? Nope.

My guess is it will. And I always believe in paying attention at railroad crossings.

But all I know for sure at this point is that the story we thought for Saturday's paper didn't materialize.

And for that we say, oops.[[In-content Ad]]