By BENNETT HALL
Gazette-Times reporter | Posted: Friday, May 9, 2008 12:00 am
Venell Farms negotiates to buy tracks so that service can resume
Efforts to reopen part of the embargoed Bailey Branch rail line are inching toward a conclusion.
"We're trying to get the railroad tracks put back together here," said Larry Venell of Venell Farms, formerly one of the largest shippers on the shut-down 23-mile branch line that runs south from Corvallis to the Hull-Oakes Lumber Mill in Dawson.
Venell is negotiating to buy a 4½-mile stretch of track that runs from his farm to the current terminus in Corvallis.
"We're making a lot of headway with the Union Pacific, and we're working with the Willamette & Pacific," Venell said.
The Union Pacific Railroad owns the tracks but leases them to the Willamette & Pacific, an Oregon shortline operator. After years of threatening to abandon the dilapidated and lightly used branch line, the W&P halted its weekly freight runs last June, citing safety concerns.
A coalition of farmers, mill operators and other south Benton County freight shippers filed suit in August to force the railroad to resume service, but suspended the litigation in October in favor of negotiations to buy the line from UP.
Now, instead of trying to buy the entire Bailey Branch as a group, all the shippers except Venell have dropped out of the talks.
Venell hopes to purchase just the length of track between Corvallis and his farm property at Llewellyn Road, where he has a railroad siding with loading facilities, and cut a deal with the W&P to pick up and drop off rail cars there.
In the past, Venell Farms has shipped as many as 300 carloads a year from the siding. The farm's products include grass seed, wheat and feed pellets for livestock.
If successful, Venell said, he would pay to repair the tracks and would approach other former Bailey Branch users about using his siding as a transfer point for shipping product and bringing in supplies.
"We would lend ourselves to be a reload (point)," Venell said. "It would be advantageous to us to put as much freight there as we could."
Union Pacific spokeswoman Zoe Richmond said the railroad has held off on moving to permanently abandon the Bailey Branch while sale negotiations go on.
"We are continuing to discuss a potential sale with our customer Larry Venell," Richmond said.
Neither side would discuss a dollar figure for the deal, but UP's last reported asking price for the entire branch line was $1.8 million.
Venell said he hoped to have the rail connection up and running in time to ship wheat this summer.
Bennett Hall can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.