70 Business View Magazine - May 2016
date the different aspects of its customers’ needs.
“We can take an entire unit train and outbound an
entire unit train at one time, without having it come
in as manifest,” she says. (A manifest train consists
of small blocks of mixed car types and cargos. A unit
train is one in which all the cars are the same because
they all carry the same commodity. Being able to store
entire unit trains affords some of RVPR’s clients con-
siderable economies of scale.)
Martelle says that some trains are pulled out of ser-
vice and stored at the yard because they are obso-
lete, while others are awaiting cleaning or repair. And
some others are stored temporarily because they are
not currently needed. For example, some oil cars were
stored recently, waiting for a hoped rebound in oil pric-
es. “Those trains are still in storage,” she says, mak-
ing reference to the still depressed prices for the fuel.
Cars that never get put back in service usually end up
getting scrapped. But until then, they pay storage fees
to RVPR.
Martelle reports that the company has plans for in-
stalling more rails on the line, either to hold additional
cars for storage or as possible sites for transloading.
“We also have quite a bit of open space that can be
built to suit,” she says. “We’re on an old military instal-
lation, which means that there’s a lot of open space
behind tall fences that are locked all the time. It’s a
very secure area in a rural community.” In addition,
