For some reason MDN just loves a railroad-related story. The shale drilling industry has single-handedly resurrected short line railroads in this country. This is a story about a new railroad terminal opening today—in Chemung County, NY.
A former oil trader who became a private equity investor, Ray Bartoszek, along with private-equity firm Carriage House Partners, invested $20 million in buying and building the Horseheads (NY) Sand and Transloading Terminal (HOST), a 200-acre site in New York’s Southern Tier area that will handle fracking sand for area drillers. Bartoszek’s plan is to ship in Montana fracking sand for drillers in Pennsylvania and (he had hoped) New York. The New York part isn’t working out so well, but Bartoszek says with the grand opening of HOST, he’ll still turn a profit by shipping sand to PA—just a smaller profit.
