Preferred Sands provides unit train service to Pennsylvania; Musket proposes pipeline-by-rail facility in Colorado

Another sign of the shales-are-driving-business times: U.S. and Canadian silica sand and proppant producer Preferred Sands recently developed a 90-plus car unit train service that runs between the company’s Genoa, Neb., silica sand mine and a 14,000-ton storage facility in McKees Rocks, Pa. The service was designed in collaboration with McKees Rocks Industrial Enterprises Inc.

The nearly mile-long train is the first finished goods unit train to service the sand industry with a capacity to move about 10,000 tons of dry sand, Preferred Sands officials said in a prepared statement.

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Meanwhile, The Broe Group announced that Musket Corp. plans to establish a crude-oil export terminal in the Great Western Industrial Park in Windsor, Colo., along a soon-to-be-built loop track on the Great Western Railway of Colorado L.L.C., a short line operated by Broe’s OmniTRAX Inc.

Broe recently acquired 320 acres of former Eastman Kodak Co. property in the park, some of which will be used by Musket for the pipeline-by-rail facility. Fuel-storage tanks on the site with the capacity to hold 48,000 barrels will be converted for crude oil storage. The Great Western Railway plans to extend its track to complete a four-mile-long loop within the park.