CSX Transportation will expand its domestic intermodal service on November 2 by adding Dallas and the central Pennsylvania town of Chambersburg to its network that operates from the railroad’s intermodal container transfer facility (ICTF) in Northwest Ohio.

The railroad will run two separate trains, with one connecting the Ohio Valley hub, located in the city of North Baltimore, to Chambersburg, and a second linking North Baltimore and Dallas. Both will provide daily service.

Depending on the day that the equipment arrives at North Baltimore, deliveries will be made within two to four days, CSX said, adding that the new service will provide a “competitive transit alternative to over-the-road shipping, delivering both capacity and cost-savings benefits.”

Opened in 2011, the North Baltimore ICTF is the railroad’s pivot of a hub-and-spoke operation where freight arriving from nationwide points is transferred to double-stack trains for delivery throughout the east.

The facility currently handles more than 30 trains a day. Last year, its lift capacity was increased by roughly 50 percent with the addition of two wide-span cranes and expanding processing tracks. CSX also added new receiving and departure tracks inside the terminal limits to help facilitate train movements.

The facility “is structured to enable CSX to serve markets that lack the density to justify the start-up costs of point-to-point service,” the railroad said. “It enables rail shippers to bypass the notorious choke point of Chicago, and thus can reduce transit times by up to two days between west coast ports and distribution centers in the Ohio Valley.”