I received an email this morning from my former colleague at The Ledger, Joy Townsend. (No relation) She was Winter Haven city government reporter when the CSX project was announced last year. Not long ago, she was hired as the city’s spokeswoman.

Anyway, her email focuses on the train traffic question that we’ve blogged about some in recent days. You may recall that PCNB reported several days ago that CSX says Lakeland can expect its downtown train traffic to nearly double when the Winter Haven center opens in 2009.

Here’s Townsend’s email:

“According to information we continue to get from CSX, there will only be 3-4 additional trains per day as a result of the ILC. I’m not sure if you’re misinterpreting what [CSX spokesman] Gary Sease has said. Or, I’ve also heard there may be additional trains coming through Polk County, as a result of transferring most freight traffic from the A-line to the S-line, but those trains are not associated with the ILC.

I’m sure you want this information to be accurate, just as Winter Haven officials do. Thanks for checking this out. – joy “
[Townsend included an additional contact and phone number for CSX, which I’ve omitted from this post.]

What’s key in this email is that Winter Haven is apparently treating the CSX center and the statewide freight rail realignment as unrelated.

The two CSX representatives I spoke to – Rick Hood, head of site development and Gary Sease, a corporate spokesman – made no effort to treat the two separately. On the contrary, the relocation of current freight hub operations from Orlando to Winter Haven is only possible because there’s going to be a new site in Winter Haven.

Sease gave me the 7-8 new trains per day figure after several days of checking with operational people. He said that’s what Lakeland can expect when the center opens.

The state also seems to disagree with Townsend. The CSX center played a prominent role in the press release it provided announcing the realignment deal last summer. I linked to that “mother of all rail yards” release on Wednesday. I’ll do it again here. I would encourage anyone reading this to look at the press release in its entirety and make his or her own judgments about whether the trains “are not associated” with the CSX center.

But here’s one key line from the release: “Relocation of the freight traffic will begin upon completion of CSXT’s Integrated Logistics Center in Winter Haven.”

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