Railroad revival: Broe's OmniTrax, others, lay track for 21st century.

• Author: Buchsbaum, Lee

The four tracks curve southward as they cross the Nebraska state line into Colorado, heading west through the plains town of Julesberg. Passing a restored train station, the set of tracks pares down to two with a light-density line to Denver branching off the main. It is on this route through Julesberg that the Union Pacific Railroad makes its greatest profits, using the line as a land-bridge for hauling large blocks of often Asian-made goods and high-balling them as fast as possible from Pacific Coast ports to the Midwest where the trains are broken up or handed off to an eastern carrier.

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Every 15 minutes or so, a trainload of automotive parts, boxcars filled with TVs, or intermodal containers and piggybacked trailers overtake slower moving unit-trains of coal and other commodities in an endless parade of traveling cargo. This segment of the Union Pacific line through Julesburg, part of the storied first transcontinental railroad completed in 1869, has evolved into one of America's premier rail routes, with a higher freight density than almost any other in the nation. As we begin the 21st century, the Union Pacific and North America's other streamlined, deregulated, passenger-free, long-haul railways are healthier than ever because corridors like this function as the arteries of our nation's economic circulatory system, each freight load another vital piece of our GDP.

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But just as these trains straighten out from the first curve into Julesberg, they curve again to the northwest, leave Colorado and re-enter Nebraska headed for Cheyenne, Wyo., and the West Coast. After several decades of mergers and reorganizations that have left the West with just two pared down super-system freight carriers--the Burlington Northern Santa Fe and the Union Pacific--Julesberg is the only point in Colorado located along one of those high-speed, high-tech transcontinental freight corridors.

Every other rail route in the state is, at best, a secondary line compared to it. With a challenging geography and a changing corporate strategy for the nation's major railroads, Colorado's rail infrastructure will have to be redesigned to meet 21st century traffic demands. Simultaneously, however, shortline operators such as Denver's OmniTrax Inc., by returning to the basics of personalized customer service, continue to grow traffic on routes and in markets that the UP and BNSF are vacating.

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