The Central Oregon & Pacific Railroad and Oregon International Port of Coos Bay are in a tussle over the Coos Bay rail line. One of the flash points is the 17 miles still open at the east end of the tracks.

When CORP closed the Coos Bay line in September 2007, it continued to carry away railcars for three shippers in Noti and Vaughn up near Eugene.

Two of the companies no longer ship by rail, while the third requires only a handful of cars per month. The shippers contend they cut back use because of poor service and the economy. The railroad’s president counters the shippers are trying to taint the company’s image.

Needless to say, the shippers are siding with the port.

Despite the dearth of activity, the segment remains enticing. CORP may want to abandon the rest of the Coos Bay line, but it is set on keeping the last 17 miles. And the Port of Coos Bay said it must have the segment for its feeder line application with the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to be viable.

The three shippers are firmly in favor of the port’s application. In letters of support, they said they could ship more than 1,400 cars a year. In comparison, the entire line carried about 4,775 carloads in its last full year of operation.

The biggest shipper of the three is Swanson Group Inc., of Glendale.

Its president, Steven Swanson, explained why he prefers the port over the railroad company in his letter of support. He noted the number of shipments from the company’s Noti sawmill, located about 20 miles west of Eugene, had dropped from 830 cars in 2006 to 667 cars in 2007 to only four in 2008. The mill was busy, but CORP could not be relied upon to provide railcars on time, he wrote.

Located on a 12-acre site, the sawmill has little room for storage. Swanson representatives held several meetings with CORP in 2004, explaining the situation. They asked for at least five cars a day, five times a week.

“Despite verbal assurances, CORP continuously failed to meet this need, forcing us into the costly dilemma of shutting down our facility or finding alternative shipping options,” Swanson wrote.

Swanson Group finally decided to buy its own fleet of semi-trucks and quit the rail line. Swanson said he would go back to rail, possibly filling as many as 1,200 carloads a year, if the service was reliable and economical.

The other significant shipper is Rosboro Lumber, of Springfield, which isn’t shipping over the rail line because it closed its Vaughn plant operations.

Rosboro’s general traffic manager, Dennis Williams, said it was a weak forest products market that led the company to close its glue-laminated beam manufacturing plant in February. Rosboro initially used rail service following the embargo, but Williams said the closure affected his business.

CORP still supplied empty cars to the plant on time, but it took the railroad longer to take them away, Williams said. Although Williams isn’t sure when the beam plant might reopen, when it does, he expects he could fill about 200 cars a year.

Bob Jones, CORP’s president, said the shippers are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the railroad. By making so few orders, the companies make it difficult for CORP to respond promptly to requests.

“We’ve got to have business to justify going out there. It’s that simple,” he said. “If they’ll order cars, we’ll get them up there.”

Larry Konnie, president of Swanson Brothers Lumber Co., favors port ownership of the line, but his company is relying on rail service, though minimally.

“We’re supportive, but we are not in a panic,” he said.

The specialty timber company has requested about four or five cars a month for the past few months, he said. It may not be much, but for now at least, it’s all the traffic CORP has on the line.

“To my knowledge, we’re it,” he said.

In his letter to the STB, Konnie said it takes one to two weeks for CORP to respond to a car order at his company’s Noti mill. It then takes another week or two to have it picked up.

“It’s adequate,” he said. “It’s just slow.”

In a supplement application submitted Friday, the port said it would ensure continuous service to the three shippers should it gain ownership. It would either hire an interim operator or provide the service itself. The port would create a subsidiary to hire employees and lease locomotives if it decides to run operations, according to the port’s documents.

The port also has plans for the long haul.

It has been in discussions with four railroad companies and a former CORP general manager, Dan Lovelady, who all have expressed interest in operating the line on a permanent basis.

Martin Callery, port director of communications and freight mobility, said the port would use an accelerated timeline to find a permanent operator if the STB’s decision goes their way.

The port’s decision to apply for ownership of the line is in keeping with changes in the industry, Callery said. While international shippers used to arrange every leg of a cargo’s trip, now there is demand for a more centralized system.

“They want to call a logistics manager that does that all for them,” he said.   “In the past, ports just focused on the terminal. Now you have to be aware of these other linkages.”