Historic Northern Tier rail yard turning into hub of transport again

Sayre, a town along the New York border in the Northern Tier, grew around the Lehigh Valley Railroad. For decades nearly everyone in town worked at the rail yard. But in the middle of the 20th century, more goods started traveling in trucks down interstate highways instead of crisscrossing the country on train tracks. As a result, the 25-acre rail yard was used less and less.

“It was just a huge open space,” says Kevin Lynn, spokesman for the rail yard’s new part-owner, Linde Corporation.

Linde, a construction contractor based in Wilkes-Barre, saw the potential for the Sayre rail yard to be a hub of activity again, thanks to its location atop the Marcellus Shale formation. Companies from states like Texas and Oklahoma were trucking natural-gas drilling equipment to the Northern Tier. Why not fix up the rail yard so they could use trains instead?

The federal stimulus package included $200,000 to the Progress Authority, a local economic development group, to clean up the rail yard, including removing diesel fuel from the groundwater. Linde took on much of the task of reviving the train yard.

The Sayre rail yard is now owned by a subsidiary of Linde and The Railroad Associates Corporation in Mechanicsburg. The two companies took on a similar project on a rail yard in the Poconos town of Carbondale. Trains are using both train yards – and their potential goes beyond bringing in equipment for gas drilling.

Sources: Progress Authority; Kevin Lynn, Linde Corporation
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen