NATCHEZ — The federal agency that regulates railroads is giving the public a chance to tell them why an 81.3-mile portion of the Grenada Railway should stay right where it is.

And what happens to the railroad in Grenada could carry implications for the future of the 66-mile stretch of railroad from Natchez to Brookhaven, since both rail lines have the same owners.

Last month those owners filed abandonment paperwork on the portion of the Grenada railroad along with a petition to be exempt from the full abandonment process — a common move that would fast track the scrapping.

The Mississippi Transportation Commission and Attorney General’s office hired local lawyer Walter Brown to object to the exemption.

The exemption Grenada Railway requested would shorten the timing of the process from more than a year of investigations and testimony to just 110 days, Brown said.

If the exemption is granted, it is unlikely that the affected counties would have enough time to form a regional railroad authority — like the one created in Southwest Mississippi — to help prevent it’s scrapping.

Slowing the abandonment process will also allow time for prospective private operators to purchase the railroad, Brown said.

On Tuesday, the Surface Transportation Board decided in an uncommon decision, Brown said, to side with the MTC and host a public hearing to address the abandonment exemption.

The portion of the road in question stretches from Grenada to Canton and would affect Grenada, Montgomery, Carroll, Holmes Yazoo and Madison counties.

Letters in support of the hearing request came from U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, Mississippi Rep. Sidney Bondurant, the City of Water Valley and the Grenada County Economic Development District.

In addition, locomotive engineer Robert J. Riley of Coldwater made a separate request for a hearing.

“The thing that is loud and clear is that Mississippi and Mississippi communities aren’t interested in losing any of their rail service,” Natchez Inc. Executive Director Chandler Russ said.

The line was purchased in 2009 from CN, formerly known as Canadian National, at the same time as the Natchez-Brookhaven line.

The Natchez railroad’s future has been a source of worry since CN sold it to a newly formed company, Natchez Railway LLC. The new owners have ties to a railroad salvage company, A&K Railroad Materials.

“We know we’re dealing with a salvage operator so (the MTC) charge to me is do what we can to maintain short line operations in this state,” Brown said.

“(The owners) don’t want to operate (the Grenada) short line or any short line; that’s not the business they’re in.”