Chillicothe-Brunswick Rail Maintenance Authority
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The Chillicothe-Brunswick Rail Maintenance Authority (AAR reporting marks CBRM) was a class III railroad that operated in north-central Missouri.
It ran from Chillicothe, Missouri southeastward through the communities of Sumner and Triplett on its way to Brunswick, Missouri.
The 37 miles of railroad was originally built for the Wabash Railroad and later became part of the Norfolk and Western Railway before the N&W abandoned it the 1983. The rail line had the following interchanges
- Chillicothe - The Iowa, Chicago and Eastern Railroad, formerly the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, later the Soo Line Railroad, and most recently I&M Rail Link.
- Sumner - The BNSF Railway, formerly the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, and later the Burlington Northern.
An interchange existed in Brunswick with the Norfolk Southern Railway, formerly the Wabash Railroad and later the Norfolk and Western Railway before the railroad was torn down between Sumner and Brunswick.
[edit] History
A community economic development authority, Green Hills Rural Development, Inc., bought the 37 miles in 1985 from Norfolk Southern Railway as part of an economic development strategy. Green Hills leased the rail line to a private contractor before beginning operation of the line through an affiliated non-profit corporation known as CBRM in January 1986.
The line was leased to the Wabash and Grand River Railway on April 1, 1990, but returned to the CBRM after this lease terminated on December 1, 1993; the 1993 floods throughout the midwest having caused significant damage to the tracks and impacting W&GR operations.
The CBRM operated the line through the 1990s, seeing a consistent pattern of 10 to 20% traffic growth per year, and helping to develop a 67 acre industrial park with new industries, creating over 300 new full time jobs and attracting in excess of $57 million in new private sector investment to the area served by the rail line. The rail line also attracted a regional grain terminal at its southern end. Despite having a book value well in excess of $1.5 million, the line was "sold" to the city of Chillicothe by Green Hills for $32,500 without the benefit of open public bidding.
On December 8, 2006, the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune reported that the city of Chillicothe had sold the majority of the railroad (approximately 30 miles) to Seattle, Washington-based Montoff Transportation, LLC for $976,000. The part of the railroad that was sold had been embargoed since 2004. The city still owns the railroad, now known as the Missouri North Central Railroad, to the Chillicothe industrial park and to a location immediately east where future development is planned. In 2008, the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune reported that the city of Chillicothe bought back the sold portion of the railroad from Montoff for $10 and is planning on turning it into a rails-to-trails project.
Today, the part of the railroad that stretched from Brunswick northward through Triplett and to where it meets up with BNSF railway in Sumner has been torn down, while the tracks north of that to the location east of Chillicothe have been abandoned and most of the tracks are covered in vegetation.
