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Norfolk Southern opens a $191M route

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Norfolk Southern Corp. on Thursday ran its first train loaded with double-stacked cargo containers through some of the most rugged parts of the Appalachian Mountains, opening a $191 million route made possible by an ambitious tunnel-expansion project.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Norfolk Southern Corp. on Thursday ran its first train loaded with double-stacked cargo containers through some of the most rugged parts of the Appalachian Mountains, opening a $191 million route made possible by an ambitious tunnel-expansion project.

The company raised the heights of 28 tunnels along an old coal route, creating a more direct path for bigger freight trains to travel from an international shipping port in Norfolk, Va., to a transfer terminal in Columbus. The trip is now shorter by 250 miles - and 24 hours.

Norfolk Southern and eastern rival CSX Corp. want to maximize the amount of consumer goods they can haul on a single train as they compete with the trucking industry to take more freight from the East Coast to the Midwest.

Railroads are seen as gauges of the nation's economic health because they carry an array of consumer and business goods. Thursday's Norfolk Southern train carried 150 double-stacked containers as it rumbled through the mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, and into the hills of southern Ohio.

Norfolk Southern put up $97.8 million for the three-year project, while the federal government added $83.3 million. Ohio and Virginia chipped in $9.8 million.