Carver Lumber was promised some things by the city. The city promised that Carver would continue to receive rail service via the Kellar Branch until the new western spur could be completed. The city promised it wouldn’t stop service on the Kellar Branch until service via that western spur was in place and operating smoothly. And the city promised Carver that it would receive comparable shipping rates via the west.

The city broke its promises.

Now Carver Lumber has petitioned the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to overturn their ruling and force the city to reinstate service on the Kellar Branch. Pioneer Railcorp is also filing a motion to stay the STB’s ruling pending appeal in light of this new development.

You can read Carver Lumber’s grievances here. The STB ruling makes it possible for the city to start dismantling the Kellar Branch any time after January 22, 2006. However, the promised western spur is not yet complete, and the corners being cut in its construction will add to Carver’s shipping costs.

To make matters worse, they have received no shipments via the Kellar Branch since September, resulting in over $25,000 in additional shipping costs to truck the lumber from the rail yard to Pioneer Park. Why? Because the company the city hired to work the line, Central Illinois Railway (a subsidiary of DOT Rail in Granville, Ill.), is unable to haul the rail cars up the Kellar line. You may remember the last time they tried — and the whole load slid backwards down the hill and derailed.

Furthermore, even once the western spur is completed, the city has been unable to pursuade Union Pacific (the only line the western spur will access) to allow CIRY to use their tracks to make deliveries to Carver Lumber. Without trackage rights, they may be left without service entirely. That’s the trouble when you don’t have neutral access — the kind of neutral access they have via the Kellar Branch.

And why is all this nonsense going on? Because the Park District wants to remove a working rail line to put in a hiking trail. They’ve already driven potential business away from Pioneer Park because of this ceaseless quest to remove competitive rail service. Now it’s almost as if they’re trying to run Carver Lumber out of there as well.

The city could make things a whole lot easier on everyone if they would just kill this ill-conceived trail project and sell the rail line to Pioneer Railcorp. Then the Park District could use their grants to build a trail along a different route to connect the Rock Island with the Pimiteoui — a route that wouldn’t hurt Peoria businesses.