I-55 Rail Corridor

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NSSD70ACe
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I-55 Rail Corridor

Unread post by NSSD70ACe »

Hello all!

Since my robotics team made it to the FIRST World's Competition, I will be heading down to St. Louis today. Last year, we took I-55 south through Illinois and most of the way we paralleled a set of tracks. This is obviously the tracks that Amtrak uses for its Lincoln Service trains, but my questions are who actually owns the tracks, what is the subdivision (or subdivisions), what freight traffic does it get, and when is freight busiest?


Thanks!

-NS
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MP73point4
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Re: I-55 Rail Corridor

Unread post by MP73point4 »

Ex-Chicago & Alton/Gulf Mobile & Ohio/Illinois Central Gulf now CN.
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NSSD70ACe
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Re: I-55 Rail Corridor

Unread post by NSSD70ACe »

MP73point4 wrote:Ex-Chicago & Alton/Gulf Mobile & Ohio/Illinois Central Gulf now CN.

CN? That's..not what I was expecting.

Anyway, thanks! I do have another question: what UP line is in the area, if any? I remember seeing some Armour Yellow.
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Re: I-55 Rail Corridor

Unread post by ~Z~ »

NSSD70ACe wrote:
MP73point4 wrote:Ex-Chicago & Alton/Gulf Mobile & Ohio/Illinois Central Gulf now CN.

CN? That's..not what I was expecting.

Anyway, thanks! I do have another question: what UP line is in the area, if any? I remember seeing some Armour Yellow.
That's because CN isn't right. CN hugs along I-57 that goes through Champaign.
Union Pacific owns the line along I-55 that goes to St Louis. See this map: http://www.idot.illinois.gov/Assets/upl ... System.jpg
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GTW6401
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Re: I-55 Rail Corridor

Unread post by GTW6401 »

CN still maintains ownership between Chicago and Joliet. Its mostly passenger trains running on the line but CN maintains local service from Glenn Yard. There are also plenty of local industries that CN switches in Lemont.

ICG hung onto the line north of Joliet when the Chicago Missouri & Western Railway was formed in 1987. They had major financial issues and the railroad was sold off in pieces in 1989. Southern Pacific acquired the line then, and other portions became part of the Gateway Western (now KCS).

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Re: I-55 Rail Corridor

Unread post by chriiis »

Interestingly, when SP bought the line, it came with an intermodal yard. The IMX yard was in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago, currently an empty field near Damen and the canal, as UP closed it in the late 90's.

A few years later UP built the Global 4 intermodal yard southwest of Joliet, near BNSF's Logistic Park. During the intervening years there was very little to zero freight traffic on the north end of the line.

North of Joliet, there are a few stack train transfers to the other 3 'Global' UP IM yards and to CSX's Bedford Park (I believe most of which continues the North Baltimore,OH) and at least one stack train to the west coast. There used to be coal to the power plant on the south side of Joliet (which I can't remember if it was UP or CN) and a CN local to a chemical plant on the river (possibly on BNSF trackage rights?).

South of G4, there's one stack train pair. Southbound it's the ZG4HO to Houston,TX sometime after my (and Amtrak's) bedtime, midnight? It cuts off a block for Mesquite,TX (near Dallas) in Dupo,IL (near St.Louis). Northbound it's the ZMQG4 from Mesquite to Global 4, picking up the Houstons in Dupo. The ZMQG4 usual departs Dupo in the afternoon and pulls in to G4 before sunrise.

There is some unit grain traffic on the line and some general manifest. There's an MASBN/MBNAS pair that run between Bloomington,IL and the A&S yard in E.St.Louis, each three times a week. They feed a local or two out of Bloomington, that roam a bit north and south.

Supposedly, before UP opened G4, they were contractually obligated to run a certain amount of freight on the rail for Amtrak, so the story goes there was a turn out of Bloomington to Joliet called "the rust buster" of loaded stone cars that ran, but what it did was "up to debate".

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Re: I-55 Rail Corridor

Unread post by SD80MAC »

I was in Bloomington for a few days back in 2012 and the only UP freight I recall seeing was a southbound train of empty well cars one afternoon. There were customers north of Bloomington so I assumed there must be some type of local service.
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Re: I-55 Rail Corridor

Unread post by chriiis »

Springfield to St.Louis is a bit more complicated, and far from my area of expertise. Don't take this post as gospel, and I welcome fact checking ( ...paging BN13148).

With buying the SP, UP had two parallel routes from (roughly) Springfield into E.St.Louis, and has rationalized the south end of the ex-CNW Peoria Sub. It was cut at the Central Illinois & Midland (part of G&W) in Barr, a few miles north of Springfield. I believe the the very south end was sold to NS for access to a coal mine not far southeast of Carlinville and there maybe a chunk in the middle still seeing some local service, but that's all anterior to your question.

The CIM tracks from Barr cross the UP Springfield subdivision at the now-demolished Ridgely Tower about 2 miles north of the Springfield Amtrak station, above Sangamon Ave at the southwest end of the lightly used UP yard. UP traffic off the Peoria sub enters: mostly grain, some frac sand from mines in western Wisconsin to the gas fields of Oklahoma and western Texas (maybe primarily northbound empties?). There had been some manifest, but it seems to be on or off, I can't say currently).

For a bit more than a mile, starting about two miles south of the Amtrak station, an NS line and the remnant of a KCS line merge onto and off the UP Springfield sub. The NS line from Decatur to Moberly (the Hannibal district?) is busier, I'll wildly guess 5-10 trains per day each way. Supposedly a KCS local will come up from Roodhouse one day a week (Wednesday's?) to interchange with the CIM (and others? CN?) at the CIM Shops yard.

Between Virden and Girard, the BNSF Beardstown sub parallels and then crosses the UP Springfield sub. The line was primarily for moving coal from Wyoming to the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys, and grain. I believe there is some bridge traffic from Texas and Oklahoma to Galesburg, and an elusive local out of Centralia.

Just north of Alton, the UP line merges with a KCS line at Godfrey. I think the story goes, when the IC spun off the ex-C&A lines in 1987, they were sold to the Chicago, Missouri and Western (which had some sort of connection to the ATSF, I'm not sure if it was a subsidiary or former managers, but it had something to do with also buying the South Shore and the TPW). You The CMW went bankrupt quickly and the Alton lines were split, with the SP buying the lion share for Chicago access, albeit poor. The Gateway Western, a different ATSF related company, bought the western chunk, from KC to Springfield and to E.St.Louis. In 1997 KCS bought the GWWR.

Below Godfrey, you might be able to see the almost daily KCS intermodal trains IVNKC (and IKCVN) between Venice,Il and Kansas City. Really these start in Marion,Oh as CSX Q107, well discussed+photographed elsewhere on this board, and upon arrival at the KCS IM yard in Grandview,Mo some traffic is cut off and unloaded, but I believe that most is tacked onto the rear of QKCNL that runs thru to Nuevo Laredo on the Mexican border for sorting to multiple destinations in central Mexico. After leaving CSX's Rose Lake yard, the IVNKC used to pick up a block of intermodal I understood to have been originated on KCS in the old Gateway yard, on the south side of E.St.Louis. I'm not sure if this is still the case, I haven't witnessed its St.Louis doings since CSX started running some traffic on it from North Baltimore to St.Louis and Kansas City. The IVNKC tended to leave Rose Lake in the late morning and the IKCVN would tend to arrive in the early afternoon.

Apparently, twice a week (Monday's and Thursday's?) there is also a pair of KCS manifest turns out of each end at KC and St.L that meet and swap in the middle (at Roodhouse? Maybe at Mexico,Mo?) and the crews supposedly returns to their respective homes.

Industrial E.St.Louis starts around Alton, and the minutiae of the operations there I could only scratch the surface of. Needless to say there's a lot. There is an NS local up to Alton, UP's Pana sub (including some BNSF traffic) and a different NS line from Decatur spur in at Mitchell, at Granite City you might see the Respondek railroad one one side and the U.S. Steel mill on the other, then Amtrak will turn the corner at the north end of the TRRA yard before crossing the Mississippi River along with a bunch of other BNSF and NS traffic, before going under and then paralleling the light rail, ending at the Amtrak station next to a UP yard with the BNSF mains closer and the UP mains to KC the south.

Hope this helps

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Re: I-55 Rail Corridor

Unread post by chriiis »

To answer two of your other questions, above Bloomington its UP's Joliet sub and the Springfield sub below.

The line is busiest above Joliet, slowly getting busier the further south you go, especially below Alton.

Notice I didn't touch on any of the myriad of lines that cross at grade.

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Re: I-55 Rail Corridor

Unread post by NSSD70ACe »

Thanks all for the information. I saw a couple of the intermodal trains, one in each direction, and two Amtrak Lincoln Service trains. Interestingly enough, I have yet to see anything in St. Louis proper. One would think that you'd see something in a busy city like this.


Thanks again,

-NS
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the contents of the above post are my opinion and mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

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