MORAN — Ruben Lopez had a more pleasant task here Wednesday than during a previous visit.
Lopez, Union Pacific superintendent of transportation services, spent several days south of Moran a year ago directing cleanup of a freight train derailment. This time he was in town to participate in award of a $20,000 grant to benefit the Moran Library, courtesy of the railroad.
The grant was attracted through efforts of Thrive Allen County. Barbara Chalker Anderson, a Moran native and Kansas Department of Commerce representative, helped write the grant application.
“We’re happy to be able to provide some support for Moran,” and its library, Lopez said.
The grant will be used to help build a new library on a vacant lot the city owns just to the south of its present facility.
Mayor Phillip Merkel told the Register a new library has been a goal of the Moran city council for several years. The Union Pacific Railroad grant is the first money banked for the project. Merkel said plans for a new library put its cost at $300,000.
No other money has been set aside.
“A new library has been a goal and this is just the beginning,” he said of the grant. “We’ve talked about putting up a building and then completing it a phase at a time.”
The library today is in a structure that originally held City Hall and the ambulance station. When those two were moved to a new building to the north, the library was expanded. Today it holds about 5,000 books, magazine and videos, with access to literally thousands more through the Southeast Kansas Library System.
The library also has five computers for public use and wireless Internet connection that permits patrons to go online with laptops, said Connie McWhirter, librarian the past five years.
The library is open 2 to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 5 to 8 p.m. Thursdays and 9 a.m. to noon Saturdays.
BEN JONES, director of public relations for Union Pacific, also gave Merkel a medallion recognizing 2012 as Union Pacific’s 150th birthday. He pointed out the railroad and Moran had had a good working relationship for many years.
Union Pacific was incorporated July 1, 1862 under the federal Pacific Railroad Act, which put emphasis on construction of railroads from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. Coming during the Civil War, it was a measure to help preserve the Union.
The line through Moran came a little later, with construction in 1886-87.
For years the railroad hopper cars carrying coal from Wyoming fields to power plants in Oklahoma have passed through Moran. Now, Lopez observed, coal as freight has waned because power plants rely more on natural gas, a cheaper fuel.
That hasn’t decreased freight traffic, though. Hoppers now carry sand, used for fracking operations in production of oil and gas. Many other companies have seized economy of scale advantage of moving freight by rail.
