HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. -- Norfolk Southern Corp. fired back yesterday at attempts to force it to spare a 320-employee Blair County rail car repair shop, insisting that the only thing binding the company is economic reality, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.

And the Hollidaysburg Car Shop is on Norfolk Southern's Death Row because the economic reality there is the goliath facility is a drain, tapping $7 million from the company last year, Norfolk Southern argued.

"The economic losses incurred at Hollidaysburg are substantial ones that NS simply cannot afford to have continue," company lawyers wrote in a rebuttal filed with the federal Surface Transportation Board, final arbiter for the rail shop's future.

The fight pits Norfolk Southern against rail labor and the Ridge administration in a battle over promises the railroad company offered as it tried to win labor and government approval to split Consolidated Rail Corp. with rival railroad CSX Corp. When Conrail was pared up two years ago, Norfolk Southern's take included the Hollidaysburg shop and the larger Juniata Locomotive Shop seven miles away, in Altoona.

Now, Hollidaysburg is scheduled for shutdown Sept. 1.

But labor and the Ridge administration charge that Norfolk Southern promised to keep work flowing into both shops and make capital investments, including $4 million at Hollidaysburg -- one promise all sides agree was never kept.

"They made a very straightforward commitment to continue to operate that shop," Gary Maslanka, international staff representative with the Transport Workers Union, a prime shop union, said yesterday.

The fight has bred increasing unease among Altoona-area railroaders, worried that if the Hollidaysburg car repair shop and its $15 million payroll vanish, the Juniata locomotive repair shop -- 1,000 employees and an estimated $49 million payroll -- will follow.

The company acknowledged that it promised to invest $4 million at the Hollidaysburg shop, saying that making it now, in sight of the shutdown, would make poor economic sense.