GP30M4216 wrote:
Kalamazoo has been a tangle of rail lines since the 3rd road came into town nearly 150 years ago. What exists today is a consolidation of several decades worth of eliminating switches, wyes, sidings, and even some through routes. Still not ideal but not nearly the number of road crossings or trains as once before. Perhaps with all this talk of high speed rail, some Kzoo residents are confused why Grand Elk isn't taking the BO Wye at 110mph???
lol
GP30M4216 wrote:The overpass idea would have resulted in a lot of demolition and lengthy ramps across much of the eastern part of downtown. It would have decimated the area now seeing so much activity and rebirth in the Bell's, Hopcat vicinity. As was pointed out, train counts are fewer today than the 80s when this was proposed. I agree with GAP, however...the shove move down past Gibson, even with a vehicle to get the conductor from the rear end to the cab, certainly is not a fast operation.
With the road trains getting longer and longer (especially the Elkhart turn) it's making matters worse for the common man. I'm all for seeing a GDLK land barge, but eventually the city's gonna demand that something is done. It happened when the Elk had a mechanical failure right after leaving the yard a few months ago. Stalled traffic downtown for over two hours. The city demanded that they are informed the next time something like that was gonna happen.
The way I see it, Grand Elk doesn't have a lot of options here. They can keep running like they are, no problem, but as their trains get longer thanks to the overhead traffic for/from NS and the interchange from GRE, MQT, CSX, etc., it's really gonna start pissing off more people as the trains take longer to clear out of downtown. Alternatively, crews could leave part of their train on the main, take half of it in, yard it, and come back out to get the rest. Problem with that is that isn't remotely efficient and you're still going to be blocking a crossing unless you're way north or way south of town.
Has there been any progress with Grand Elk building a secondary yard in the Kalamazoo area? I saw Ashplundh (I think that's how you spell it) Tree Experts at the former South Yard site at Cork street as well as the Kilgore Road crossing. Both people were on GDLK property, my guess looking at removing some trees. Might be nothing.