The Pacific Harbor Line was formed in 1998 to take over the
Harbor Belt Line (HBL). In 1998, the
Alameda Corridor was nearing completion, allowing for a massive amount of railroad traffic from the largest harbors in the Western hemisphere:
Port of Los Angeles and
Port of Long Beach.
The railroad has with a web of of track.
Overview
The PHL was formed to create a level playing field for shippers. Up to that time, the HBL was owned and operated by the major railroads in Los Angeles; the
Southern Pacific, the
Santa Fe Railway and the
Union Pacific. One of the problems with the HBL arrangement was that a shipper could have problems getting their goods to or from the port depending on where an individual railroad's track ended.
The PHL, privately owned by the
Anacostia & Pacific Company, operates on tracks and facilities owned by the ports. The PHL is a neutral
switching railroad
A switching and terminal railroad is a freight railroad company whose primary purpose is to perform local switching services or to own and operate a terminal facility. Switching is a type of operation done within the limits of a yard. It genera ...
that serves shippers at this large port complex. PHL handles 40,000 carloads of freight a year excluding intermodal traffic. The
Alameda Corridor provides rail service to port complex through
BNSF and
UP railroads.
PHL was the first railroad to have its locomotive fleet composed only of Tier II and Tier III "clean diesel" locomotives.
Pacific Harbor Line was named the 2009
Short Line Railroad of the Year by ''
Railway Age'' magazine.
In July 2013, Pacific Harbor Line signed a new five-year
collective agreement
A collective agreement, collective labour agreement (CLA) or collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is a written contract negotiated through collective bargaining for employees by one or more trade unions with the management of a company (or with ...
with the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET).
BLET has represented workers at the company since PHL was formed in 1998.
On March 31, 2020, Eduardo Moreno attempted to crash a Pacific Harbor Line train into the hospital ship , which was in the Port of Los Angeles to provide Los Angeles with additional hospital capacity during the
COVID-19 pandemic in California, but the train stopped approximately from the ship.
References
Further reading
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External links
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About PHL founding
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pacific Harbor Line Inc.
California railroads
Switching and terminal railroads