Following article is from The Pottstown Mercury newspaper serving Pottstown, PA.
Luxury rail car project put on hold; 21 laid off
Friday, November 11, 2011
By Evan Brandt
POTTSTOWN — Work on refurbishing passenger rail cars for the luxurious Greenbrier Express has stopped, and 21 of the workers there have been laid off, the entrepreneur in charge of the project has confirmed.
Ross Rowland, who in February began hiring workers to refurbish 15 passenger cars in a portion of the former Bethlehem Steel plant to be used on an exclusive luxury rail line between the resort and Washington, D.C., confirmed the news this week.
Crews had just about finished all the demolition work on the inside of the cars and were getting ready to prepare the cars for the second phase, installing the new interiors.
He said 21 workers have been laid off, but 17 have been kept on to do “engineering work.”
The problem, Rowland said, is rules issued by the Federal Railroad Administration that require that the equipment and furnishings in the cars be designed to withstand extremely high impacts.
Rowland said Jim Justice — the West Virginia billionaire who owns and is restoring the 710-room, 200-year-old resort at Greenbrier — “decided to put the project on hold” until the impact of the regulations can be fully analyzed.
The engineering workers are being kept on, re-designing the interiors of the rooms to meet the new regulations, for when — or if — the project gets a green light to move forward.
“They’re getting things ready,” said Rowland, who has been involved with railroads all his life and is perhaps best known for helping stage the American Freedom Train.
During the 21 months surrounding America’s bicentennial, the 25-car American Freedom Train, packed with more than 550 original documents, artifacts and memorabilia on loan from the National Archives and 285 lenders, brought American history along 25,000 miles to 138 cities and seven million paid visitors.
It was government regulations, and not the economy, that put the brakes on the project, said Rowland, who added “there have been people who said we should not be launching a luxury railroad in this economy, but the product was going to determine that. Either the market would accept it or it wouldn’t.”
Rowland, who knew presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, said the work stoppage is “absolutely” an example of government over-regulation costing jobs.
One of those jobs was held by welder and fabricator Mark Carlson of Honey Brook.
“I joined up for one reason and that was to do something great,” said Carlson.
“I wanted to be a part of history and I passed up other opportunities to take this job,” said Carlson, who said, “I’ve worked on the space program, ships, bridges and power plants and I wanted to put a piece of history back on the tracks.”
Carlson said he already has interviews lined up but “if my phone rings and they want me back, I’ll be there in a New York minute,” but then added, “but I’m not holding my breath.”
