The longstanding effort to have farm products inside refrigerated train cars running non-stop between Kingsbury in LaPorte County and Florida has taken, perhaps, the biggest step toward becoming reality.
Authorities in Tampa have decided to build a 130,000-square-foot cold storage facility to handle refrigerated imports and exports at that city's port.
Initially, shipments to and from the Port Tampa Bay will be delivered by trucks strictly in Florida.
However, the cold storage facility in Florida is part of a plan followed closely by the agriculture community to ship fresh produce and other farm- raised goods on refrigerated rail cars to and from Kingsbury without stopping.
"For sure, the express Midwest/Florida rail connection is also part of the plan moving forward,'' said Wade Elliott, vice-president of marketing and business development for Port Tampa Bay.
The Florida port is served by CSX Corp. which in 2013, extended a rail line into the Kingsbury Industrial Park in anticipation of running cold storage freight cars to and from refrigerated warehouses at each location.
The rail extension came after the prestigious ''Select Site'' status was given by CSX to the newly created Inland Logistics Port, an 800-acre site within the industrial park where a cold storage offloading facility is earmarked to tie in with the one in Florida.
"Obviously, there has to be other pieces of the puzzle come together, including a complimentary cold storage facility in the Midwest, so we have two terminals on either end of the network, so that's still very much part of our plan,'' said Elliott.
Dave Christian, director for the LaPorte County Office of Economic Development, said the decision in Florida to build what's referred to as the southern bookend of the project is a "critical next step in getting us closer.''
Trains would run non-stop to Kingsbury with fruits and vegetables from Central America for distribution in the Midwest and return to Florida with Indiana meats and poultry, he said
But, Elliott said, demand would reflect the type of farm products on the trains and where they originate.
"It could be chilled and frozen fruit. A lot of different types of commodties,'' said Elliott, who did not rule out produce from the Midwest reaching places as far away as Asia once arriving by train and put on barges at the Florida port.
The decision furthers the momentum at Kingsbury, where old, abandoned tracks are being refurbished by JBC Rail Restoration and C & D Rail Services, both out of Illinois, to create a railyard north of Hupp Road.
The railyard will serve those companies and others expected to follow.
JBC Rail Restoration is involved with storing and shipping a wide variety of products, including farm goods.
C & D Rail Services is moving its headquarters here and about a dozen employees dispatched to various locations to refurbish, maintain and install new track.
Helena Chemical Co. has also expanded at Kingsbury and presently is working on extending a rail spur off an existing Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad line a half mile to its recently completed facility.
The Carmel, Ind. based company is a leading distributor of crop protection and crop production inputs and services for agricultural turf, ornamental, forestry, aquatics and vegetation management markets.
An agreement was also struck recently to provide railroads serving the park rights to use each other's lines to provide connectivity throughout the park.
There is no specific timeframe for starting up the trains because of the many things that have to be done yet like building the cold storage facility in Kingsbury, but the hope is "as soon as possible,'' Elliott said.
Securing enough customers for moving product and hammering out rail leases must also occur, said La Porte County attorney Shaw Friedman.
Product after removed from trains would be placed into a cold storage warehouses and delivered to customers by trucks and overseas on barges.
Elliott said trains running non-stop helps guarantee a fresher product, especiallly on shipments from other countres, and Kingsbury is attractive for many reasons that include avoiding delays from congestion in the Chicago area railyards.
Being in the Midwest, Kingsbury also provides access to a large volume of growers and other suppliers of food to feed trains back to Florida, he said.
Friedman said the decision to build in Florida is more significant, perhaps, than the Select Site status assigned to Kingsbury by CSX,
"It's very encouraging. We're doing all we can to see that this is put together,'' said Friedman