Last week the American Shortline and Regional Railroad Association awarded one of the industry’s highest honors for marketing achievement to the Reading and Northern. This is the fifth time R & N has won this prestigious award in the last 15 years.

Jim Cerulli, vice president industrial development, accepted the award at a ceremony on April 3 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The ASLRRA recognized R & N for its development of a large Marcellus Shale oriented transload facility in Tunkhannock, the heart of Marcellus Shale gas production. To make this project a reality, R & N found a site proximate to local highways and along its Susquehanna Branch, entered into a long-term lease for the site, hired a nationally respected transloader to perform the actual transload operation, and proceeded to construct Phase 1 of the new Tunkhannock transload facility. Phase 1, consisting of two tracks with a combined capacity of 34 car spots and provisions for trucking/transloading and office space, was completed within approximately 6 months’ time.

Opened in late 2021, the facility began full operations in early 2022 and handled over 2200 carloads of frack sand despite many challenges facing the Marcellus Shale region.

Given its success with customers who praise the excellent service and location, R & N expects significant volume growth in 2023, potentially exceeding 5000-plus carloads.

Leading to its success is the fact that R & N offers 7 day/365 service and double shifts to handle the changing needs for sand customers as well as hundreds of car spots for loaded sand cars at our nearby Pittston serving yard. Managing this facility for R & N is industry veteran Jim Raffa, senior vice president for petrochemicals & minerals.

The construction and development of the Tunkhannock Transload facility was the largest single Industrial/Business Development project undertaken by R & N.

Reading & Northern Railroad, with its corporate headquarters in Port Clinton, is a privately held railroad company serving over 70 customers in nine eastern Pennsylvania counties (Berks, Bradford, Carbon, Columbia, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Northumberland, Schuylkill, and Wyoming).

It has expanded its operations over the last 40 years and now handles over 34,000 carloads of freight and 250,000 excursion train riders over 400 miles of track.

Reading & Northern operates both freight services and steam and diesel-powered excursion passenger services, owns over 1,700 freight cars, and employs nearly 300 dedicated employees. Reading & Northern has repeatedly been honored as one of the premier railroads in the nation including being named Regional Railroad of the year in 2020 by Railway Age Magazine