Highlight of National Transportation Week activities for the three traffic clubs of Richmond, Va., was a May 17 trip via Southern to West Point, Va., and a tour of The Chesapeake Corporation pulp and paper mill located there. |
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The paper industry in the United States last year paid more than a billion dollars in freight bills. A lot of money; but every cent was well spent.
Because as the traffic manager for one of the paper industry's leading companies says, "Our products would be worthless if we could not transport them." The statement comes from Alvah L. Wyatt, traffic manager for The Chesapeake Corporation of Virginia - that state's largest independent pulp and paper mill (annual production, some 200,000 tons of paper); the manufacturer (through subsidiary companies) of corrugated boxes; producer of wood pulp for other mills to use in making finished paper; and processor of a new line of plant food and mulch products.
Highlight of National Transportation Week activities for the three traffic clubs of Richmond, Va., was a May 17 trip via Southern to West Point, Va., and a tour of The Chesapeake Corporation pulp and paper mill located there. |
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In short, a very big operation is run by this Southern Railway System customer in Virginia. Traffic Manager Wyatt used the words quoted to explain why his company had arranged a tour of the huge Chesapeake plant at West Point, Va., as the highlight of National Transportation Week activities for the members of the Richmond Traffic Club, the Capital City Traffic Club of Virginia and the Women's Traffic Club of Richmond.
Representatives of Southern from Washington, New York City, Richmond and Charlotte, N. C., were there too as some 200 members of these clubs and representatives of business and industry from around the state of Virginia bought train tickets and boarded a seven - car Southern special at the railway's Richmond yards early on May 17. Then came a 90-minute trip eastward to where the Mattaponi River joins the Pamunkey to form the York . . . to where the loblolly pine grows tall near the shores of Chesapeake Bay . . . to where the Chesapeake mill buildings rise in sharp relief against tidewater Virginia's Hat horizon.
A welcoming concert by the West Point High School Band on the front lawn of Chesapeake's general office building, introductory remarks by officials of Chesapeake, and at 10:45 a.m., in groups of ten, the visitors began their tour through the noise and heat and pungent odors, witnessing the well-timed efficiency and economy of effort which marks the handling of powerful machinery by skilled men - the common denominators of dynamic industry .
When the tour was done, Chesapeake's visitors had seen a good deal. They had seen a power plant that generates enough energy to provide the electrical needs for a town of 10,000 persons; they had seen the machinery set to work by this energy - in the pulp mill, where logs are stripped of their bark, chipped, and the wood fibers separated from impurities, where some 750 tons of pulp is produced each day through high-pressure "cooking" of the chips in chemical solutions; and they had seen the paper mill, where the pulp arrives in a water slurry and leaves - some 500 feet further along - in the form of paper. They had seen the fibrous matter of nature broken down, treated chemically under great stress, and reformed as men would have it - for sacks, grocery bags and cardboard boxes.
Gesturing to the buildings beyond the Southern diesel unit, a Chesapeak guide indicates points of intrest at the big plant. |
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And it was time for lunch - fried chicken and Virginia ham, deviled eggs and stuffed crab - at the West Point Country Club a few hundred feet from Southern's tracks. While the visitors ate, a Southern Railway freight engine passed along those tracks - with a heavy head end load of wood-rack cars bearing pulpwood for Chesapeake. It was business as usual for Southern and the mill. And "business as usual" means a lot of business.
One of the tour parties gathers attentively at the end of Chesa-peake's paper production line. About 60 per cent of Chesapeake's daily output of 600-700 tons leaves on Southern Railway tracks. |
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For instance - the Chesapeake mill at West Point consumes 400,000 cords of pulpwood each year; enough wood to make a four - foot - high by four - foot - wide stack reaching along Southern's mainline from Washington southward to a point within 30 rail miles of Atlanta, Ga. Between 40 and 50 per cent of this wood is delivered to Chesapeake by Southern.
One of Chesapeake's main fuel sources is coal, about 65,000 tons per year. All of this coal is delivered to Chesapeake by Southern. Outbound, Chesapeake loads daily between 600 and 700 tons of products - about 60 per cent of which goes into freight cars for initial movement by Southern Railway.
A tour party heads for the wood-storage yard in the background, behind the Southern wood-rack cars. Between 40 and 50 per cent of the pulpwood used at Chesapeake arrives on Southern tracks. On the left is a portion of the 65,000 tons of coal - all delivered via Southern - Cheaspeake uses each year. |
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The Southern and Chesapeake - solid partners in one of America's biggest industries. Altogether, The Chesapeake Corporation of Virginia was indeed a fitting tour subject for the transportation professionals who visited it May 17 to highlight their observance of National Transportation Week.
And in that context, it was just as fitting that the visitors should make the trip via Southern - Chesapeake's railroad link with the marketplace.
While the visitors were at lunch, it was business as usual for Chesapeake and Southern. This Southern freight locomotive passed by with a heavy head end load of pulpwood for the nearby mill. |
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And: JOBS FOLLOW THE FREIGHT!