
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 19, 1990                   TAG: 9005190142
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

NEW RAILROAD BUYS SOME NS OHIO TRACK

Norfolk Southern Corp. has sold 446 miles of track and facilities in Akron, Canton and Brewster in Ohio for $40 million to Wheeling Acquisition Corp., a company that is starting a new railroad.

NS also said Thursday it would sublease to Wheeling another 121 miles of track, formerly owned by the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway and now leased by Norfolk Southern's Norfolk and Western subsidiary.

NS said roughly 425 employees are affected by the sale. The new railroad expects to have a work force of about 380 people, including management and supervisory staff, in its first year of operation.

A coalition of rail unions has been meeting with railroad officials trying to reach an agreement on the sale that would protect union employees.

Late Thursday night, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued a restraining order forbidding the unions to strike the railroad over the sale. Another court hearing will be held on Wednesday.

Arnold B. McKinnon, NS' chairman and chief executive officer, said the sale was consistent with Norfolk Southern's program of spinning off rail properties that can be more economically operated by smaller lines.

The trackage in the sale represents essentially the former Akron, Canton and Youngstown Railroad, the former Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway, and most of the former Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad. All became Norfolk and Western Railway subsidiaries in 1964 when the Wabash and Nickel Plate railroads were also added to the NW system.

by CNB