The addition of a second mainline track to SEMO Port's railroad system will keep rail traffic from coming to a halt during high water.

The half-mile segment of track, at a higher elevation than the port's existing mainline track, was officially opened Friday after Missouri Department of Transportation Director Kevin Keith drove in a ceremonial gold railroad spike.

The $802,961 project was paid for with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, often referred to as the federal stimulus package. The federal funds were distributed to the port through the Missouri Department of Transportation.

"We need the extra capacity because our rail traffic is growing," said Dan Overbey, executive director of SEMO Port. "This will reduce the number of days in an average year in which rail service is cut off."

Last year about 5,400 railcars carried goods to or from the port. Rail traffic has increased steadily over the last decade from 2,139 cars in 2001 to 2,389 in 2005 to 4,139 in 2009.

The port's top railroad user is cement manufacturer Buzzi Unicem, which was responsible for about 79 percent of the tonnage shipped by rail at the port last year. Several other companies located at the port also use the railroad, including SEMO Milling, Girardeau Stevedors and Consolidated Grain.

Work began on the elevated line project in 2010, but due to flooding on the Mississippi River last spring and summer nearly a year of construction time was lost.

The project included replacing a wooden railroad trestle with an eight-foot corrugated metal pipe that runs under both the first and second main rail lines, Overbey said.

The second mainline track is part of a long-term plan to eventually tie into another new segment of track that will loop around the port, enabling it to load and unload mile-and-a-half-long unit trains to and from barges, Overbey said. There is no funding in place for the loop track project yet, he said.

While about 95 percent of all MoDOT projects involved roads, it's not uncommon for them to fund other modes of transportation, Keith said.

"It's not just rail, it's not the river or the port, it's a transportation system. We need all components of that ultimately to get people and goods where they need to be," he said.

In addition to railway and port projects, MoDOT also occasionally funds aviation-related projects, he said.

The port's railway, which opened in 1995, offers its customers a connection to both Union Pacific at Scott City and Burlington Northern-Santa Fe in Cape Girardeau.

mmiller@semissourian.com

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10 Bill Bess Drive, Scott City, MO