Krentzman Reopening Rail Line

After around three years, Joseph Krentzman & Sons, a Lewistown, PA, scrap recycler will have direct rail access from its yard to its customers. Michael Krentzman, vice president of the company, which has been in operation for six generations, said that the railroad tracks were removed when the site underwent a Superfund cleanup. As part of the process to clean up the facility, which was contaminated by the former owner of the property, the facility’s rail had to be removed for cleanup purposes.

Krentzman adds that when the scrap company relocated to the facility a significant amount of cleanup had to take place, even as the scrap company continued to operate.

The re-introduction of the railroad siding will allow the company to more effectively ship scrap metal to customers in a wider geographic region.

The company also has had good luck working the surrounding community to get the railroad tracks reinstalled. One big concern that Krentzman has is that after a three-year time period when rail movement did not take place on the site, residents in the area may become complacent about checking to ensure there isn’t a train moving down the tracks.

The company expects to have its first gondola cars moving on the tracks within the next week. The rail will link up to a short line, which will then be connected to the Burlington Northern.

"We knew we had to do that (install tracks)," Krentzman notes. The trucking is thin, and we always knew we had to have the tracks to trade in a wider range.

A promising note is that while many scrap dealers end up in a more confrontational position with the local populace, Krentzman says that the company would not have been able to successfully get the tracks reinstalled without great assistance from the community at large.