BNSF Linking Seattle and North Baltimore

BNSF has introduced domestic intermodal service between Seattle and the Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal in North Baltimore operated by CSX.

In a message sent this week to shippers, BNSF said the container-only service will be offered five days a week for eastbound and westbound freight originating and terminating in Seattle.

The notice said containers can be forwarded from North Baltimore to such points as Toledo, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Louisville, and Pittsburgh.

Eastbound moves are expected to take 163 hours and westbound moves 167 hours from cutoff to availability.

BNSF has a haulage rights agreement with CSX that began in October 2018 and initially included service between North Baltimore and Los Angeles.

Service to North Baltimore from Northern California was added in April 2019.

BNSF Adding More Service to North Baltimore Terminal

BNSF have increased the frequency of intermodal service operating between Los Angles and the CSX Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal at North Baltimore.

A Sunday morning departure from the Hobart terminal in Los Angeles has been added along with a Monday morning departure from North Baltimore.

The container trains operate on CSX under a haulage agreement. The service now runs six days a week.

The run through trains began in October 2018 with CSX crews handling the trains east of Chicago.

BNSF officials have indicated that they will likely begin serving additional West Coast terminals from North Baltimore as their domestic intermodal traffic grows.

The volume growth is being driven by increases in retail and e-commerce, particularly traffic bound for distribution centers.

CSX-BNSF to Launch Ohio-LA Container Service

CSX and BNSF said this week they will begin a container service between Los Angeles and Ohio that will use the Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal in North Baltimore.

The service will begin on Oct. 29 and originate trains five days a week in each direction.

On BNSF, the containers will move via the Southern Transcon route west of Chicago.

“Customers who take advantage of this new service can reach key markets within the fast-growing Ohio Valley region,” said BNSF Group Vice President Consumer Products Tom Williams in a statement. “Our new Ohio intermodal service will create an efficient, direct service from the West Coast.”

CSX said it will work with NorthPoint Development to construct a 500-acre logistics park adjacent to North Baltimore facility and is expanding eastern access to the facility through new service to and from the Port of New York and New Jersey.

This will involve international traffic that will be trucked from North Baltimore to destinations in southern Michigan, western Ohio, and Indiana.

The logistics park will include traditional warehousing and distribution capabilities, as well as services such as a container yard and equipment storage, export container stuffing, and transload and break-bulk resources, all within a heavy-haul local corridor.

The North Baltimore facility was opened in June 2011. At the time, CSX operated it on a hub and spoke model in which containers from various locations throughout the CSX network were routed there to be interchanged.

The hub and spoke approach was intended to help build traffic density in low-density intermodal markets.

That model was dropped last year when CSX ended the hub and spoke intermodal operating model. At the time, CSX officials said sorting containers in North Baltimore added transit time to traffic that is price- and service-sensitive.

Instead, CSX said it would focus on point-to-point intermodal service in high-volume markets.

The BNSF-CSX agreement means that containers will no longer be trucked across Chicago but instead will move through the city by rail.

Intermodal analyst Larry Gross told Trains magazine that BNSF is trading the cost of trucking containers in Chicago for extended drayage from North Baltimore to destinations that include Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Louisville.

Gross said there is not much drayage capacity at present in North Baltimore, which means the new service is likely initially to appeal to national trucking companies such as J.B. Hunt and Schneider National, which have their own drivers.

“It’s not like drayage capacity will magically appear,” Gross said, but added that he expects local drayage capacity to develop as intermodal volume increases in North Baltimore.

The logistics park CSX plans to develop in North Baltimore will offer opportunities for backhaul moves of agricultural products to Asia.

The park will be similar to logistics parks that BNSF has near its intermodal facilities in Joliet, Illinois; Oklahoma City; Kansas City; and Alliance, Texas.

In the short term, CSX said the number of trains serving the North Baltimore facility won’t change, but is expected to grow over time.

The service that starts on Oct. 29 will use existing intermodal trains that BNSF and CSX interchange in Chicago.

CSX North Baltimore Terminal Takes on New Role as Intermodal Block Swapping Facility

The Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal will continue in operation, although as a block-swapping facility for Chicago interchange traffic and serving local intermodal traffic.

The terminal, which opened in 2011, had been built to serve as the centerpiece of a hub-and-spoke network designed to grow traffic in what had been low-density markets.

But CSX decided last year that it was difficult to make money in low-volume intermodal lanes because it meant containers were being handled at origin, at the hub-sorting terminal in North Baltimore, Ohio; and then at the destination.

CSX executives said this added cost, transit time and delays, particularly when trains had to travel on roundabout routes to reach the terminal.

Closing the North Baltimore terminal and ending the hub and spoke model cost CSX 7 percent of its intermodal traffic.

But CSX’s Dean Piacente, vice president of intermodal marketing and sale, said that the carrier has already replaced that lost traffic with more profitable business in higher-volume lanes.

But North Baltimore has taken on a new role of a block-swapping facility for intermodal traffic.

That began last week when CSX and an unnamed Western railroad began forwarding run-through eastbound intermodal traffic from Chicago to North Baltimore, where it is block-swapped for destinations on the CSX system.

Piacente said this will free capacity in Chicago and cut 24 to 48 hours from coast-to-coast transit times. Westbound block swapping will begin soon.