IORY South End Part 4

[midland sub]

It's at Jeffersonville on the DT&I South Sub. About a half mile or so south of where 71 crosses the DT&I. It's right off State Route 729. You have to do the aerial and not bird's eye view to see it.

[alittlevanwerty]

Sorry didn't catch how many cars were at the ethanol plant that day.

LSL? Lima to where does this train go?

Yesterday I caught a highrail flatbed marking ties and dropping bundles at the Sugar St yard west side of the road. Today I went by, the ties were fanned out and all cars shoved north by the bridge. Also NS crew was welding at the I&O/NS diamond for several hours at least. Did not see any I&O activity today, locos somewhere else on the line.

Yesterday I caught 4082 leaving north so I got ahead of them. Filmed them on the CSX tracks.

[redside20]

Nice catch, I'd say about 30 gondolas and four tanks and the LSL goes to either Tremont north of Springfield or Junction Yard in Springfield proper.

[strugglin]

It's at Jeffersonville on the DT&I South Sub. About a half mile or so south of where 71 crosses the DT&I. It's right off State Route 729. You have to do the aerial and not bird's eye view to see it.

Thanks! I was looking along the Midland Sub, not the DT&I, I found it now, that yard is huge! Plenty of room for expansion in the future if necessary also!

Any info on when they will begin operations out of the yard and what it will consist of?

[midland sub]

Bluegrass built it as an intermodal facility aka Central Ohio Logistics Center. Bluegrass processes soybeans for food products in Asian markets. They currently bag and process them across the road in their warehouse and then truck them to Cincy or Columbus in 40 ft containers. Plan is to load on rail and send them to Cincy. Transload them in Cincy to a barge to New Orleans and then west to Asia by a container boat. Hang up is in Cincy on the transload.

The north and middle tracks will be used for loading the containers and the south track is actually for access into the super site across the road if anything gets built there and needs rail.

[bnsf8000]

Good vid alittlevanwerty! If I read your post right with the vid you caught the LNL [Lima North Local]. Always like to see something heading north of Lima. looks like the US 30 overpass in the distance. Keep up the great vids!

PW

[AARR]

Bluegrass built it as an intermodal facility aka Central Ohio Logistics Center. Bluegrass processes soybeans for food products in Asian markets. They currently bag and process them across the road in their warehouse and then truck them to Cincy or Columbus in 40 ft containers. Plan is to load on rail and send them to Cincy. Transload them in Cincy to a barge to New Orleans and then west to Asia by a container boat. Hang up is in Cincy on the transload.

I have read intermodal has to go 1000 miles or 500 miles or something like that to be profitable. IORY is essentially operating shuttle trains to Cinncy. And the investment to build the tracks and other capital structures is not cheap. would you happen to have some insights how IORY can do this is few, if any, other railroads can?

If it was going by rail to New Orleans it would be more understandable to me.

[redside20]

Bluegrass built it as an intermodal facility aka Central Ohio Logistics Center. Bluegrass processes soybeans for food products in Asian markets. They currently bag and process them across the road in their warehouse and then truck them to Cincy or Columbus in 40 ft containers. Plan is to load on rail and send them to Cincy. Transload them in Cincy to a barge to New Orleans and then west to Asia by a container boat. Hang up is in Cincy on the transload.

I have read intermodal has to go 1000 miles or 500 miles or something like that to be profitable. IORY is essentially operating shuttle trains to Cinncy. And the investment to build the tracks and other capital structures is not cheap. would you happen to have some insights how IORY can do this is few, if any, other railroads can?

If it was going by rail to New Orleans it would be more understandable to me.

Maybe thats where Genessee and Wyoming comes in...

[midland sub]

Fairly simple AARR, the I&O isn't paying for any of the capital projects to do the Bluegrass Farms project. Bluegrass has paid for everything. They secured more than $8 million dollars in loans from the state that are forgiveable at some point to build the Jeffersonville facility. The original plan in Cincy was to build a new barge transload just west of where the pig iron is transloaded. That required the owners of the current barge transload to sell, which they refused and on top of that the city of Cincy wants the land transformed into a retail development anyway.....
So the latest plan is to use the barge transload located on the I&O's Oasis Sub. Cincy Barge & Rail transloads pig iron there already for Delta and made track improvements themselves (Fulton County RR- paper operaton). They have a crane that can transload the containers to the barges already, but there's a problem with a developer of townhouses just west of there that doesn't want the tracks used for that. Depends on who is talking on how soon Bluegrass will have something worked out in Cincy.

The soybeans shipments are what got the ball rolling on the project funding wise. But, it's the other potential traffic that the owner is also interested in. Valero sells more DDG out of Bloomingburg to a farmer that loads it into containers and ships it to China, than the I&O moves via rail now. He figures to be able to snag some of that traffic and some of the corn that Heritage Co-op has been shipping in containers too.

Should be an easy money maker for the I&O. BGF is going to lease the COFC cars for the move. I&O will shuttle them back and forth between Jeffersonville and Cincy. Not sure what sort of profit margin moving that would be, but they make a nice margin on the Melvin stone traffic moving to Cincy. Using a barge from Cincy to New Orleans really cuts the shipping costs down. It's possible to use an all rail move, but it's more expensive.

[strugglin]

I couldn't resist taking a trip down the Midland today to see the Blue Grass Yard in person, ended up catching CEFX 9500 & CIND 5003 with about 15 gons & 10 tank cars crossing Hoppes Rd pulling into Konrad Yard and then calling it a day at 5:00pm.





The Blue Grass Yard is pretty impressive, I thought it looked like an intermodal yard from the aerial views, but couldn't imagine why they would be building an intermodal yard in the middle of nowhere off of the I&O! The big yellow overhead crane you can see on the bing images is still in the yard there.

[redside20]

I guess a giant ammonia tank was transported to the Trupointe facility in South Chuck yesterday. Midland Sub, do you if this will generate any traffic?

http://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/ ... ton/nPxxN/

[midland sub]

Depends on if they can talk RA into a decent rate to ship by rail for the inbound anhydrous.

[midland sub]

Sort of an interesting development by CSX. They have abolished all Midland jobs based out of Parsons, i.e. the G002 job. Not sure what that means at the moment, other than a possible change in the trackage rights issue with NS.

Wash CH Turn making an afternoon run up the Midland with 9400-4072-9500 and 48 cars.

[midland sub]

Here's a youtube video of Wednesday's Wash CH Turn recrewed by the WCH-A crew climbing Madeira hill on the old B&O main. Track looks great compared to what it was a couple of weeks ago... Those 3 former SP locos sound great too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjoGSkqXfX4

[AARR]

Here's a youtube video of Wednesday's Wash CH Turn recrewed by the WCH-A crew climbing Madeira hill on the old B&O main. Track looks great compared to what it was a couple of weeks ago... Those 3 former SP locos sound great too!

That was a fun train to watch. Thanks for posting. If you had chosen to video the entire train I would have watched every car

[alittlevanwerty]

Nice vid, they are smoking like NKP 765 lol.

[midland sub]

I didn't shoot the video, wish I did! Here's another one from back in June of the Wash CH Turn heading north. They hadn't done the tie and surface project yet and you can see how bad the track was starting to get. This is the first up close shot I've seen of the old B&O CPL just north of Oakley. There's a handful still standing around Oakley and Norwood on the Midland.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD0LVD3C ... ure=relmfu

[midland sub]

A bit of a close call of the Wash CH Turn today....don't think that Chevy Aveo would have came out to well....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbK1DEoE ... ature=plcp

[bnsf8000]

7/27/12. LSL back into I&O yard in Lima at 8:05 PM. In charge were IORY 4071/9400 with 15 cars. Had 8 tank cars: 3 PGTX, 2 UTLX, 1 TILX, 1 DBCX and 1 GATX, 3 plastics hoppers: FURX, ACFX and CEFX, 3 MTY centerbeams: BCOL, CN and ATW and 1 CN box car.

Right after the LSL was pulling in the yard the NS turn went on into town to get onto CSX via the trackage rights. Didn't get to see whole train because the LSL was stopped blocking the crossing.

The 5002 was parked by the I&O yard office.

PW

[midland sub]

Caught both Logan Sub crews working in Lancaster Tuesday morning. L1 was getting ready to shove 4 boxcars into US Corrugated. L2 was coming back engine lite from dropping off loads at Ralston. About 7 or 8 more NS grain cars with wheat for Keynes Bros in Logan were sitting in the small C&O yard.

CSX is back to using grain and ethanol symbols for their moves down the Midland since abolishing the G002 Parsons job almost 2 weeks ago. CSX 5223-7621-8740 were sitting in Wash CH waiting for a 90 car grain train to be loaded on the DT&I.