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

DATE: THURSDAY, June 7, 1990                   TAG: 9006070129
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: C6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

EX-ROANOKE JOURNALIST PUTS HIMSELF ON TRACK

James W. Hanscom, a police reporter for The Roanoke Times in the 1950s, is one of three partners who recently bought three short-line railroads from Norfolk Southern Corp. for $40 million.

Hanscom, who has been a transportation consultant, a Wall Street securities analyst and a staff member of the Federal Railway Administration, heads real estate operations for the new Wheeling and Lake Erie system.

As president of Wheeling Land and Development Co., he said he expects to "aggressively" develop land along the new 600-mile system. The new company combines the former Wheeling & Lake Erie; Akron, Canton & Youngstown; and Pittsburgh & West Virginia railroads.

These railroads were "not in the main stream, never part of the Norfolk Southern strategy," Hanscom said in a telephone interview. They came into what is now Norfolk Southern through the 1964 Norfolk and Western-Nickel Plate merger.

The regional railroad movement has taken off in the past 10 years, he said. New owners "have changed the economics. A lot of them have been able to attract new traffic and new attention" to the shorter lines.

When he was with the Federal Railway Administration in the early 1980s, Hanscom worked on restructuring, helped arrange financing and encouraged the new owners of the short lines. "The Feds got them started and then got out," he said.

Hanscom and his partners worked 2 1/2 years to put the Wheeling & Lake Erie deal together. "We didn't even think about federal money," he said.

Their transaction was arranged through loans syndicated by the Bank of America and an equity investor, Wertheim Schroeder, a New York bond investment house.

Hanscom is moving from Northern Virginia to Clarke County. He will have an office for the real estate operation in a Pittsburgh suburb and a part-time office at Brewster, Ohio, the Wheeling & Lake Erie headquarters.

Hanscom also edited the former Roanoke Star, a weekly paper, and wrote business news for the Richmond News Leader, the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk and the Journal of Commerce.

by CNB