A group hoping to preserve freight rail shipping in the Northwoods will try for a third time to get a federal grant to get rail cars for loggers to use.
Darryl Landeau with the North Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission says they have lost out twice on federal transportation grants known by the acronym “TIGER,” which they hope to use to fund the purchase of a new log rail car fleet. He says that purchase would help deal with transportation issues in the region.
“The fleet of log cars that the railroads have is getting older and diminishing, and the return on investment on those cars isn’t there for the railroads,” he says. “The idea is that we would develop this log car fleet.”
The Northwoods Rail Transit Commission say the harvesting and transporting of logs throughout the Great Lakes forest area has long suffered from the lack of private investment.
Contributed by WXPR