- Chillicothe-Brunswick Rail Maintenance Authority
The Chillicothe-Brunswick Rail Maintenance Authority reporting mark|CBRM was a
class III railroad that operated in north-centralMissouri .It ran from
Chillicothe, Missouri southeastward through the communities of Sumner and Triplett on its way toBrunswick, Missouri .The convert|37|mi of railroad was originally built for the
Wabash Railroad and later became part of theNorfolk and Western Railway (N&W) before the N&W abandoned it in 1983. The rail line had the following interchanges:* Chillicothe - The
Iowa, Chicago and Eastern Railroad , formerly theChicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad , later theSoo Line Railroad , and most recentlyI&M Rail Link .
* Sumner - TheBNSF Railway , formerly theChicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad , and later theBurlington Northern .An interchange existed in Brunswick with the
Norfolk Southern Railway , formerly the Wabash Railroad and later the Norfolk and Western Railway before the railroad was torn down between Sumner and Brunswick.History
A community economic development authority, Green Hills Rural Development, Inc., bought the convert|37|mi in 1985 from Norfolk Southern Railway as part of an economic development strategy. Green Hills leased the rail line to a private contractor before beginning operation of the line through an affiliated non-profit corporation known as CBRM in January 1986.
The line was leased to the
Wabash and Grand River Railway onApril 1 ,1990 , but returned to the CBRM after this lease terminated onDecember 1 ,1993 ; the 1993 floods throughout the midwest having caused significant damage to the tracks and impacting W&GR operations.The CBRM operated the line through the 1990s, seeing a consistent pattern of 10 to 20% traffic growth per year, and helping to develop a convert|67|acre|adj=on industrial park with new industries, creating over 300 new full time jobs and attracting in excess of $57 million in new private sector investment to the area served by the rail line. The rail line also attracted a regional grain terminal at its southern end. Despite having a book value well in excess of $1.5 million, the line was "sold" to the city of Chillicothe by Green Hills for $32,500 without the benefit of open public bidding.
On
December 8 ,2006 , the "Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune" reported that the city of Chillicothe had sold the majority of the railroad (approximately convert|30|mi|disp=slash) to Seattle-based Montoff Transportation, LLC for $976,000. The part of the railroad that was sold had been embargoed since 2004. The city still owns the railroad, now known as theMissouri North Central Railroad , to the Chillicothe industrial park and to a location immediately east where future development is planned. In 2008, the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune reported that the city of Chillicothe bought back the sold portion of the railroad from Montoff for $10 and is planning on turning it into a rails-to-trails project.Today, the part of the railroad that stretched from Brunswick northward through Triplett, Sumner, and a location just east of Chillicothe has been torn down, in hopes of turning it into a walking trail, while the rest of the railroad is in operation.
References
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Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
