EJE818 wrote:CN did repaint a IC GP10 into fresh IC paint. Expect that to be moving to the Homewood Railroad Park along with a IC caboose. I think they should slow down just a bit on repainting the DM&IR engines. Oh well, if they repaint all of those EJ&E has some SDMs in DM&IR paint working Kirk Yard in Gary that I want to see soon. I wonder how long the remaining 2 dozen or so WC SD45s have left. I hear CN is powe short.
Your friendly neighborhood CNW fan.
nordique72 wrote: CNW in no way "submarined" service on the Reedsburg Sub- and to compare that line's abandonment with those of the branches in the Midwest is like comparing apples and oranges. I can not think of any part of former "400" territory that was abandoned in this way.
CNW in no way "submarined" service on the Reedsburg Sub- and to compare that line's abandonment with those of the branches in the Midwest is like comparing apples and oranges. I can not think of any part of former "400" territory that was abandoned in this way.
Excuse me for taking a while to get back to you on this one. I had to do some fact checking from a friend first before I continued our little conversation. What I found out is that you are completely wrong. The CNW did submarine service on the Reedsburg sub. And I can give you a few examples.
Number 1. Some time in the 80s I belive, there was a tank company in Elroy, which I don't recall the name of at the moment. They wouldn't ship that often, but when they did it was usually in cuts of 10 cars or more. One summer, the CNW decided to store a bunch of flat cars, about 250 of them, in the old yard in Elroy until they were needed again. And one day the tank company decided they needed flat cars, about ten of them, to ship tanks on. The Station Agent, or whatever you wanted to call him, out of Baraboo, Doug Hanson, figured he would just pull ten of the cars that were in storage to give the industry, because they were right there. But when he called the head office to get clearance to pull the cars, they told him he couldn't do it. When asked why, he was told it was because they were in storage, and they couldn't be pulled, even though the idea was to store them until they were needed. Hanson had to get Flats from a lot further away, and it delayed the shipment.
Number 2. Another example is Grede Foundries in Reedsburg. They were a fairly regular shipper for a while, and had two seperate spurs into their plant. But slowly and surely the CNW kept giving the foundry worse and worse service. Cars would be delayed in Chicago or various other points on the line, things wouldn't be spotted correctly, etc, and eventually the foundry just became fed up. They pulled up all trackage inside their plant, and have yet to ever ship again directly with the Railroad. There is hope though that the Wisconsin and Southern is winning the business back finally. A spur is currently being built into a nearby industry, and as part of the propsal to the City Council included that the spur could eventually be extended into Grede in the near future.
Number 3. In the same approximate time frame as the flat car incident, there was a new industry in Reedsburg just being built near the railroad tracks. Doug Hanson was able to convince them that they should get a railroad spur and ship by rail. He turned the paperwork over to the Marketing department so they could get the spur in the works. Well, Hanson was called down to the CNW offices, I believe in Madison, expecting to be commended. But exactly the opposite happened. He was informed by management that it was a completely unexceptable action. They told him that they were trying to get rid of the sub, not to create more business on it, and he was given 30 days unpaid leave for doing so. He was also threatened that if he ever did it again, he'd be fired.
Those are just a couple of examples that prove my point, and there are many more that I can dig up if you'd like me too. Trust me, I've talked to people that know.
Noah Hofrichter
CN isn't really power short. They run their trains with as few units as possible and besides .. they have more units coming. they have 50 more SD70M-2's in the process and at the end of it all they are supposed to have 100 each of the M-2's and the GEVO's
10000 feet and no dynamics? Today is going to be a good day ...
Noah-
I am glad you came up with a few examples of CNW service on the Reedsburg Sub.- though it is true that CNW wanted to get rid of the line between Reedsburg and Elroy, I wouldn't call that submarining service.
In your first story- this is not really a case of bad service on purpose, moreso a case of following the rules and an agent who was trying to be creative to solve a customer's problem. Those cars that were in storage were being stored for a specific reason- whether that was either surplus in their respected pool, or being held over for a customer who did not yet need them. All cars are assigned to a specific pool for service- this makes sure that properly equipped cars are being used in the right capacity. As an example you can not use a plain wood deck flat car for combine loading, since it does not have the proper decking or tiedowns (all these things are outlined in the AAR code and ORER listings). In this case also the cars in storage are not in active service- nor are they free runner cars (like some Railboxes and Railgons- which means they are in a general pool and can be used for any kind of load wherever needed). This means you can not just grab them because they are there- those cars are being stored for a customer who is paying to make sure those cars stay in storage until they need them- in order to release them for service (if properly equipped), you must contact the fleet manager for those cars and obtain permission from them and the owner of the car to release them for said service. If this is not possible, the agent must then order the next available cars in an available, properly equipped pool, wherever they might be. The car must then be waybilled to that location for loading and delivered to the customer- it's not as easy as the story sounds. My father was an equipment manager for Union Pacific and he would get requests like this all the time for his cars to be used in odd ways that they were not equipped for, such as wanting to use airslides in butter service to backhaul sugar to another plant. Since the car is not in a pool for sugar service, it can not be used in this capacity, unless it was cleaned and reassigned. Same thing for flat cars- you can't use a piggyback flat to load pipe because it does not have the proper rigs and tiedowns. And as I recall in your story- the CNW still got the customer the cars (who was not a high volume, frequent shipper), and shipped the load, despite the delay in recieving the proper cars... how is that bad service?
In your second story- I recall that CNW lost the Greede traffic in the years previous to the Staggers act being passed. During this time (as related in my prior posts) it was very difficult for railroads to compete with trucks- rail was regulated as to the rates they could publish, and profit was hard to come by on short hauls or certain commodity traffic. Meanwhile Skinner Transport and Hartje Trucking could charge whatever lowball rate they wanted, undercutting the CNW service prices as set by the ICC. Skinner (and Schnieder in Green Bay) made their fortunes off from stealing mid level traffic from the CNW in the 70s and 80s. If you can't make a profit hauling the goods, you can't apply capitol to your equipment and tracks- and service suffers as a result. Railroads all had a tough go of it in the pre-Staggers days at providing top notch service to midlevel customers. Now that WSOR operates the track in a non-regulated environment- they can again compete against the trucks for this traffic at a profit, unlike CNW in the 1970s.
Your third story leaves alot to the imagination about the proposed plant that wanted rail service. I am not going to comment on the second part of the story (about the suspension, et al) since I do not know the person, or what truly happened- but the first part seems oversimplified. When an agent recieves a request from a potential customer on line to look into service- the marketing department conducts a survey of the customer's proposal, then submits it's findings for the transportation and logistics department in regards to whether service should be implemented or not. The agent is in charge of drumming up service- that is his job, but beyond that it is in the hands of the marketing and transportation folks to decide if service would be profitable and worth the investment. My questions regarding the plant was- how serious and well funded was the projected business that was to be built? Did it already exist or was it part of a future proposal? What were the findings of the marketing departments survey of the project? Was the product being shipped a seasonal shipment, or would it have been year round? What was the projected route haul by CNW- was it long haul or short haul, and did the traffic terminate on CNW or did it have to be interchanged? What sort of upgrades were required to the physical plant of the line before the railroad could begin hauling the cargo (if the line had weight restrictions, did the cargo fall within the approved limits for that class of AAR track?) Why was CNW building a spur for them at cost for the plant? How many cars per month and for the full year did the plant plan on shipping? Such findings would give you a much better idea as to why the proposal was turned down, rather than just the "we don't want this line anymore" excuse. If this customer was planning on say building and autoframe assembly plant there, that would ship 500 cars a month, year round to a CNW served end point on a long haul- I can guarantee the answer would have been- "When can you start building?" Such proposals come and go all the time for railroads- car management also is consulted in this regard to see if cars are available to make a new pool for the customer, once again there are a lot of companies out there that think having a pool of 10 cars and shipping 600 loads a year is big business- the railroads think otherwise.
If you want solid evidence of "submarining" service- I wouldn't look to stories about proposed businesses and stored flatcars. Find evidence of CNW purposely raising overhead rates on their online customers by 25% for no reason or removing rates altogether- or suspending service for weeks at a time without any reason (like in one case where CNW suspended service on a branch in Iowa for a couple weeks because the assigned caboose was bad-ordered). I could tell these same exact stories about UP and their treatment of the Herndon and Woodward Subs of the ex-CNW/MILW in Iowa- yes it sounds sinister in black and white, maybe even senseless, but when approached from a business standpoint it is perfectly clear why the railroad did what it did. If you have the numbers and the reports that show a blantant disregard for service (like the MILW's Pacific Coast Extension papers do.) that makes a much more compelling argument.
When does CN finish their order for 100 each of the ES44DC's and SD70M-2's?
More bad news, all but 4 of the BC Rail engines in the deadline are gone, most likely scrapped, this includes all of the RS18s that were there. Now there are more WC SD45s waiting to be scrapped in the same spot the RS18s were.