CSX/RJ Corman Louisville, KY Question

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Trains2Planes
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CSX/RJ Corman Louisville, KY Question

Unread post by Trains2Planes »

I live in Louisville, KY. The CSX (and RJ Corman) Mainlines from Louisville-Cincinnati (and Louisville-Lexington via RJ Corman) run right in front of my house on Frankfort Avenue. Has there been a decline in the number of trains in the past six months or so? I seem to remember about 25-30 trains passing every day and it was especially busy from about 3-8pm. Have they retimed the trains, or is there in fact a decline in the number of CSX and RJ Corman trains running thru this area?

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trainjunkie47
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Re: CSX/RJ Corman Louisville, KY Question

Unread post by trainjunkie47 »

I cannot speak for the traffic on the RJ Corman. However, the Louisville - Cincinnati traffic is now almost exclusively directional running, with westbound trains coming through Kentucky, and with eastbound trains heading up the LIRC to Seymour, Indiana, then heading to Cincinnati from there on home rails. This is why you are seeing fewer trains on this route. The biggest bottleneck in the whole trip was unquestionably at LaGrange, but there is only so much capacity getting across the Ohio River between Covington and Cincinnati, as well.

Trains2Planes
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Re: CSX/RJ Corman Louisville, KY Question

Unread post by Trains2Planes »

Interesting! Now that you say that, I took notes yesterday and yes, all of the trains were headed west! During the afternoon there used to be at least 6-10 trains from 3-8pm. Yesterday there was just a west bound auto train, a west bound mixed train, and a west bound container train (that used to pass by at 3:20pm, now regularly passes by around 6pm). The RJ Corman used to pass by at 7pm with it's sand train headed toward Lexington, but now heads out east closer to dark. They used to also have a train with aluminum rolls on it that I haven't seen recently and they also usually reposition two trains of empties that I haven't seen lately. And now that you mention the bottleneck at LaGrange, I have noticed that you never see trains stopped on the siding in Lyndon (East Louisville) waiting for clearance to continue. I also wonder if production is down at the Ford factory east of town because I haven't seen near as many auto trains recently. With CSX sending trains up to Seymour and then east, I wonder why the line from Louisville north/northwest thru New Pekin, Orleans, Paoli, and ending up connecting with the mainline in Mitchell appears to be abandoned. I think I read on some other link that they were trying to abandon that route. Seems they would want to keep that as an alternate route out of Louisville if there was ever an accident or damage to the tracks.

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