Privately held short line railroad County Line Rail announced it had developed Gulf Coast Rail Gateway, a 350-acre greenfield industrial rail facility in South Texas.
The gateway, located between Sinton and Odem, Texas, will be dual served by Union Pacific and BNSF Railway on the UP Brownsville Subdivision within the Gulf Coast industrial corridor, officials said.
Officials with CLR said the site is development ready, with an initial capacity of approximately 500 railcar spots and a planned expansion of up to 3,000 total spots. The facility will feature a full loop track configuration for train staging, a transload facility, railcar cleaning and locomotive maintenance shop.
The Sinton-Odem location was chosen, officials with CLR said, for its proximity to plastic and petrochemical producers, with multiple UP industrial spurs connecting the site to Steel Dynamics, Dow, Formosa, GCGV, Shin-Tech, and other major producers in the area. Additionally, the location serves as a natural pre-gateway staging point for freight headed to Mexico through the Laredo-Brownsville gateways, with Eagle Pass routing available via San Antonio.
“This facility will reduce overall customer transit time from origin to destination by providing strategic blocking for the Class I carriers,” Bryan Boaz, Chief Commercial Officer of CLR, said. “The Gulf Coast industrial corridor has needed this for a long time. We are building this facility because the network has a gap — shippers need more flexibility and railroads need a place to stage. Land is secured and we are ready to have the conversation now with any shipper or railroad partner that moves freight through South Texas.”