Rock Island line-Union, MO to KC, MO

[Speeder]

Has anyone ever walked any portions of this line that was abandoned in the 80's?  I understand that the trestle over the Gasconade river is still intact; and that the bridge at Henley over the Osage, is; also.

A fiber optics line installed a cable along it in 1996; supposedly they used hi rail equipment to do it.  Said they had to cut a lot of vegetation and trees to move their equipment down the line.

[mudchicken]

News flash - it was embargoed in the '80's.....The western part of that is just abandoning now. Amaren, who owns it now, has gotten what leverage they could out of it and the front company is now putting the west end up for abandonment as Missouri Central RR.

AB 1068_1 Wingate to Windsor  42 Miles IN CASS, HENRY, JOHNSON, AND PETTIS COUNTIES, MO.

I walked the entire line for the previous owner in the late 1990's.

[Jim200]

What is the problem with this line? It seems to be high and dry. Or is this another case of a short line not able to obtain bridge traffic due to the western duopoly? Recently the MP line east of Pueblo Colorado, which used to have a lot of traffic, was also abandoned. It looks like Amaren will make some more money by scrapping the rail, selling the land to the counties, who can get money from the federal government to make a trail. Then we will be able to ride our skidoos from Wingate to Windsor, and soon to St Louis. Why can't the federal government spend some money to rehab the line? It gives millions of dollars to the duopoly to rehab their lines.

[mudchicken]

MoP line east of Pueblo is NOT abandoned (yet / currently only STB "Discontinuance of Service" Haswell to NA Junction, east portion still in service).  Scrapper A&K is playing games with it.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

This line was out of service long before the Rock Island folded.  Throwing money at it in an attempt to bring it up to reasonable operating standards would have been a complete waste since nothing was running on it anyway.

Duopoly??  Sounds like a word that I last heard on AM, or was it FM?

[mudchicken]

Paul: SSW ran it irregularly at 20mph or less, post-Rock (they took it away from ATSF that had big plans for it - ironically it was ATSF $$$$ that built it originally circa 1904.)... Diningcar and I both almost got involved in it at some level along with the Little Rock- Memphis Sunbelt & Santa Fe scheme in the 1980's. When CRIP folded, there were shooflys around old derailments and equipment abandoned in the field.

[SALfan]

Sir Mudchicken-
What was the Sunbelt & Santa Fe scheme? I am interested in the old Choctaw Route because we lived in AR 1982-1986 and I drove beside the line many times. Anything you could tell me about the schemes that were tried to keep the line in operation post-Rock Island would be greatly acppreciated.

[diningcar]

Perhaps my former college will also participate with some analysis of the Memphis to Amarillo RI line. He is invited to correct anything I may remember(??) below.

The competition for the RI in the 60's resulted in ICC hearings in several locations including Chicago where I was stationed in the Santa Fe Chief Engineers office. I took the opportunity to attend some of them which were held in a Michigan Ave. Hotel just a short walk from the ATSF Railway Exchange Building. These hearings resulted in the RI remaining whole (partially) until it was bankrupt.

 When the SP (SSW) had acquired the Tucumcarri to KC line (another story) ATSF wanted to create a shorter route to the southeast via Memphis rather than exchange traffic at Avard, OK with the BN (Frisco). There was a helicopter inspection made of the decrepit Memphis-Amarillo line so that an estimate could be made of the expense  to rehabilitate it to Santa Fe standards with the result being that it was not ecomomically justified. Of course the Santa Fe sales staff also analyzed the potential for originating and terminating business between Mem-Amo which might augment the overhead business  diverting at Avard that was already quantified. It did not take Santa Fe very long to conclude that acquiring this line was not something which they wished to do.

Now with the BNSF merger those issues are resolved and the Avard connection traffic revenue is all going into the same account.

[mudchicken]

Add to that the schmoozing of the State of Arkansas into creating a lease/buyback arrangement (failed), the Cotton Belt pushback and you just about have the bulk of the story. An awful lot of folks did not want to see ATSF in Memphis or St. Louis (an ATSF obsession more than once).

What DC is talking about in the sixties can be found in the ICC archives as FD-23919 (12-13-65) which would have lopped off everything Rock south of Herrington & Salina except the CottonRock Tuccumcari Line. [1780 miles of main and 895 miles of branch lines)...Some of the Rock's files on this survive at Norman (OU Library)

(HGW & AKP woulda had us hoppin' on either line had things been different - we heard more about StL -KC than we did Sunbelt)

[SALfan]

Thanks for the info. While near the line I hoped one of the big RR's would pick up the line and do something with it, but it was not to be.

[Jim200]

I think the question to ask: is it cheaper to rehab this line or build a new one from scratch? Before 2050, we are going to have 400 million people. More people mean.more freight. Some time in the future we are going to need another line. Right now the Missouri Department of Natural Resources is negotiating to purchase this portion of the line and turn it into a trail. At least MDNR is not allowing the bridges to be scrapped, as is presently to happen on the Central of Georgia abandonment. When Kansas City was having all that congestion, I thought that this line plus MKT might provide a bypass. I guess that Kansas City solved their problems and some time in the future a new line will be built, if there is room.

[mudchicken]

The line has economic possibilities and serves a large area not close to other railroads. Previous owner had a gameplan, but could not advance it far enough before Amaren took over from a non-US investor, eh...Current operator is more of a disinterested caretaker than entrepreneur.

[PNWRMNM]

Jim,

You might want to remember that the SSW bought this line, but like the Memphis Amarillo line that Mudchicken mentioned, decided that it did not make sense to spend what it would cost to rehab it to competitive condition and secured trackage rights on MP between Kansas City and St. Louis. As it happened MP was merged into UP as was SP/SSW so the correct decisions were made from a resource allocation standpoint.

Going forward it will be much cheaper to add incremental capacity to the existing line when and as needed than to pull this line out of the grave.

Mac McCulloch