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Craig
Wolf, president of E.H. Wolf and Sons in Slinger looks down
the line during a Wisconsin & Southern Railroad tour
from Milwaukee to Hartford Wednesday. The line hosted the
tour to solicit support for increasing the rail portion of
the state's budget.
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HARTFORD - Wisconsin
& Southern Railroad Company took area officials on a tour of its
line from Milwaukee to Hartford Wednesday in an effort to educate
and solicit support for increasing the rail portion of the state's
budget.
State funding of the
rail portion of the rail budget rose from $12 million in the
previous biennium to $22 million for 2007-09 and rail officials
would like to see that number increased to $42 million for the
2009-11 budget.
Wisconsin & Southern
Railroad President and CEO Bill Gardner said itÍs good to see a
larger portion of the budget going toward rail, but he said the
state has dipped into the fund to buy other failed railroads, at the
expense of keeping up the present rail system.
Gardner said the state
saved the rail line from Saukville to Kiel, but they asked WSOR to
run the line.
About 80 percent of the
system - the rail corridors and land - is owned by the state.
Another 20 percent - the infrastructure - is owned by a partnership
of the county and WSOR.
"If the state is
going to buy more railroad for us to operate, more will have to be
added to the budget," said Gardner.
Since taking over the
Milwaukee Road route in 1980, the WSOR was grown from operating 150
miles of railroad to operating over 700 miles of rail lines in the
state, but heavier cars and inadequate track have burdened aging
rails, Gardner told county and local officials as well as members of
the East Wisconsin Counties Railroad Consortium.
Much of the rail WSOR
trains run on was laid in the 1920s and 1930s, when boxcars weighed
30-50 tons. Now they are more likely to weigh 100 to 115 tons.
For
full story, go to the electronic version of The Daily News. Click
here to access the electronic version.
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