Sept. 18, 2013
Norfolk Southern coal vessel
loading is Virginia’s largest. Period.
NORFOLK, VA. – Norfolk Southern’s
Pier 6 at Lamberts Point again has loaded a record amount of coal into a single
ocean-going vessel.
Yesterday, Sept. 17, Norfolk
Southern employees finished loading 166,840 net tons, or 151,356 metric tons, of
metallurgical coal into the 984-foot M/V China Pioneer, which departed at high
tide for Liuzhou Iron and Steel in China, by way of Trinidad. That’s a record
for Pier 6 and for the entire Port of Hampton Roads, and it comes just as Pier 6
acknowledges its 50th anniversary today.
The coal was shipped by Integrity
Coal Sales International in 1,561 railroad coal cars. Anders Williams Resources
Inc. was the ship agent/broker.
NS set its previous Pier 6 record
Jan. 12, 2013, by loading 159,941.45 net tons into the M/V Cape Dover.
The previous Port of Hampton Roads
record was set Feb. 9, 1992, when Dominion Terminal Associates loaded 163,765
net tons into the M/V Ormond.
“The fact that this new record
comes at Pier 6’s 50th birthday is a big exclamation point,” said Mark H. Bower,
NS group vice president, export, metallurgical, and industrial coal marketing.
“It again demonstrates that NS and our production and sales partners are the
experienced, safe, and reliable team for getting American coal to the world’s
utilities and coke plants.”
Norfolk Southern has been
transferring coal and coke from railroad cars into ocean-going export and
domestic vessels in the Lamberts Point area since 1884, when it opened Pier 1.
In the first half of the 1900s, new Piers 2-5 featured improvements in speed and
capacity and even loaded coal into a number of famous vessels, such as those
used in Admiral Byrd's 1933 Antarctica expedition.
Pier 6 opened for business in 1962
as the hemisphere's largest, fastest, and most efficient transload facility. In
1999, Pier 6 dumped its billionth ton of coal and became the only facility in
the world to have reached that milestone.
In addition to the quantity of its
loadings, Pier 6 is known for speed. A little known fact is that, because of
design specifications, no vessel anywhere can accept coal into its holds as fast
as Pier 6 actually can load it. That likely will remain so for the foreseeable
future.
Most of the coal moving through
Pier 6 originates in Southwest Virginia, Southern West Virginia, Eastern
Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. It is shipped to several dozen countries as well as
to coastwise domestic receivers. Pier 6 is situated with access to Hampton
Roads' deep 50-foot channel that allows modern vessels to make productive use of
their large holds.
Norfolk Southern
Corporation is
one of the nation’s premier transportation companies. Its Norfolk Southern
Railway Company subsidiary operates approximately 20,000 route miles in 22 states and the District of
Columbia, serves every major container port in the eastern United States, and
provides efficient connections to other rail carriers. Norfolk Southern operates
the most extensive intermodal network in the East and is a major transporter of
coal, automotive, and industrial products.
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