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South Kansas & Oklahoma Team Earns Railway Age Award
by OneWatco
The work of the team members of Watco’s South Kansas & Oklahoma Railroad (SKOL) has resulted in a nice honor for the SKOL as the industry’s Regional Railroad of the Year.
The recognition came from trade publication Railway Age, which is featuring the SKOL in its April issue. The award has given General Manager Jerry Waun a perfect opportunity to share his gratitude. “I want everyone to know how much I appreciate everything that all these team members do day in and day out,” he said. “We probably don’t tell them as much as we should, but we absolutely appreciate it. At the end of the day, they’re the ones that allow me to do my job and all the managers to do their jobs.”
Today the SKOL team is 121 members strong, with 27 who’ve been there 10 years or more. The team includes long-timers like Jeff VanBuren, a conductor-engineer out of Coffeyville, Kansas, who’s been with the SKOL since start-up, and newcomers like Justin Boatright, a railcar mechanic in Cherryvale, Kansas, who started in late 2021.
In selecting the SKOL, Railway Age took note of the railroad’s ability to secure public-private partnerships in addressing aging track so it would better meet customer needs. A few years ago, Watco became aware that customers could no longer get by with the SKOL tracks’ rating for railcars that were 263,000 pounds or lighter. This rating applied (and still does) to all but about 33 of the SKOL’s 433 miles. Customers wanted to move more cars at the railroad industry’s heavier-capacity standard of 286,000 pounds.
Steve Coomes knows this well. Coomes is senior vice president of operations for the SKOL and 25 other railroads that comprise Watco Divisions 1 and 2.
“It just so happens a few of the largest manufacturers of cement powder are situated in southeast Kansas on the SKOL railroad,” he explains. “As those cement customers ramped up their production over the last 20 years, it became apparent the rail infrastructure necessary to sustain this type of growth and the growing demand for increasing carload weights to 286,000-pound (286K) capacity was far from adequate.”
Coomes says the same was true for grain customers, who bring the SKOL the most volume next to cement customers and further exemplify the need for the infrastructure upgrades. It won’t be long now. Thanks to federal and state grants and Watco’s investment, renovation is under way across the SKOL.
Of more than 600 U.S. freight railroads, the SKOL qualifies by Association of American Railroads standards as a regional or Class II railroad, which the AAR defines as maintaining at least 350 miles of track. Of Watco’s 46 railroads, three extend beyond short-line, or Class III, range: the SKOL (433.3 track miles), the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad (598 track miles), and the Kansas & Oklahoma Railroad (1,164.1 track miles).
The SKOL is made up from spinoffs of multiple Class 1 railroads including the Missouri Pacific; Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe; and the Frisco Line. In 2000, Watco merged the Southeast Kansas Railroad (SEK) into the SKOL to become one short line. Today, the SKOL operates from the edge of southwest Missouri to Winfield, Kansas, and from Humboldt, Kansas, south to Owasso, Oklahoma. It serves 81 rail customers at 94 locations. Annual volume exceeds 66,000 carloads.
The SKOL will be recognized May 2 at the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association Annual Conference & Exhibition in St. Louis.
