Do Class 1's shot themselves and regional railways in the foot with interchanges?

[gabe]

I just assumed the switch was IRR property because it litterally started at the IRR yard limit.

Gabe

[MP173]

Gabe:

That switch (the east switch) is not a switch from the IRR, or at least was not built as such. It is the wye track.

Go to terraserver.com and take a look, i think you will see.

Ok, just got back from Terra Server....there is a loop track where the coal is unloaded at the plant.

But, I recall far before the IRR went to Newton that the switch was there, the eastern part of the wye. It may handle coal from IRR now, but I do not believe coal came from Indiana in the 70's.

ed

[greyhounds]

Well, two things.

1) I don't think there is any question that the C&NW was better managed than the ICG in the 70's. Heineman had a lot to do with setting that up.

2) The C&NW's "Franchise" was much easier to identify that the ICG's "Franchise". (If we had one.) Like you said, connect the dots between the UP and Chicago, St. Louis and Minneapolis/St. Paul. Add in the big grain and you had it.

We weren't any major's main connection to anywhere and we ran parallel to the barges on the Mississippi/Illinois/Missouri/Ohio river systems. No excuse - the Northwestern did a better job of rationalization.

But I still think the core problem at the ICG was a corporate culture that either feared to take on the challenge of abandoning lines or rejected the obvious need to do so.

Eventually, the pendulam swung too far the other way. "Get rid of lines without analysis" replaced "Keep lines without analysis". The Iowa Division was sold off and then repurchased at twice its selling price. The Louisville line was spun off to a very successful regional with a good traffic base. By Mistake - and this is true, it was a mistake - the profitable Paducah shops complex was included in the spin off at no extra cost. The Shreveport-Meridian line was transferred to the KCS and it's become part of their core.

Got to do it right. ICG had some trouble doing that.

Eventually, the ICG got turned around and changed into the IC. By then I was gone.

[bobwilcox]

At the C&NW in the 1970's it was easy to decide which lines needed to be pulled up. We found, on the 10,000 mile system, 4,000 miles generated 80% of the revenue. That left a lot of work for the abandoment task force on the 6,000 miles that produced only 20% of the revenue. It did not take a lot of study. First the operating department connected the dots between the major interchanges and then the grain department found the other lines with surplus grain to ship out of the local area.

The next step was to tell the politicians and shippers about the plan.

[greyhounds]

Mike,

I wish I could give you some info, but it was a while ago and there were a lot of those lines.

I remember using a revenue per mile ratio - I'd write the computer programs and pull up what various lines produced in gross, divide it by their length and start from there.

Getting any new business, unless someone built a power plant, was not really an option. Not only couldn't the ICG maintain its track, it couldn't maintain its equipment. We needed more busines, but there were so many bad ordered box cars that we couldn't handle any new business. It was a mess.

You couldn't possibly tell wether a branch "made money" or not. (railroads being a "network business") If you hauled a carload of fertilizer from interchange in Council Bluffs to a receiver 20 miles down some branch line in southern Illinois, how much of the revenue did you allocate to the branch? You couldn't give it all the revenue, since you couldn't assume the main line moves were free of costs.

If you pro rated by mileage all branches would be money loosers since they'd be allocated only a tiny fraction of the revenue. My "friends" in the government came up with an arbitrary ( and stupid) rule that the branch got 50% of the revenue.

It was somewhat possible to isolate and identify the costs of operating the branch - the ICC wanted to know the costs of phone calls made to the customers, for example. But you couldn't realistically assign revenue to the branch and accurately determine a profit - loss situation.

So we just bumbled on, getting rid of lines as they sank into the mud.

Eventually, after I moved over to intermodal, we were allowed to surcharge branch line shipments.

[gabe]

Have you seen the spur the IRR built to the power plant MP 173? It is a first class piece of track that could not have been cheap. I figured they wouldn't have built it if they didn't run trains on it. Also, last time I was there, the rails were very shiny.

I think the only reason IC runs locals to Newton is solely for IRR traffic--I didn't see any other on-cite businesses near there for them to run.

I thought this post might get a response from you MP173.

Gabe

[MP173]

Oh golly Gabe, you are getting close to home, as you well know.

I will add what I know about the situation, but will not vouch for the accuracy.

The IC branch line from Effingham to Indy was indeed in bad shape, as was the Peoria to Evansville branch. CIPS built the power plant sometime in the 70's and it provided a couple of neat things for us Richland and Jasper county residents:
1. Jobs
2. A warm water discharge which made for damn good bass fishing.

Now, assuming the job didnt get in the way of bass fishing, one could find very large bass, since the warm water discharge extended the "growing season" for all fish as their metabolism didnt slow down (cold blooded critters they are).

Anyway, I digress when thinking of those big bass. To me an ideal day would be spent fishing next to a busy mainline...but we are at Trains.com, not bass.com.

IC upgraded the line from Effingham to west of Newton to handle the coal trains. The switch you are talking about going to the plant is a "wye" which was probably originally built to switch in and out. I am not sure if there is a loop track at the power plant or not. If not, then the trains would have backed down the track and used the wye to go back to Effingham, which might be possible. Also the wye gave them the option to switch carloads of freight into the plant.

Regarding the interchange today. How much are they interchanging at Newton? I would imagine the IC would not want IRR to run to Effingham. They obviously are running a local to Newton, so why not have the interchange there? IRR running to Effingham would possibly conflict with the coal movements or create an operations problem in and out of the yard at Effingham. Who knows? Just a couple of thoughts.

I doubt if IRR runs coal trains to the plant. It might occur, but I would doubt it as most of that coal came from Colorado or Wyoming, and having read MP's excellent article last year on coal, the Southern Indiana and western coal probably wouldnt mix too well.

Greyhound....do you have any specifics on the abandonments/sales of those lines down in that area? I read in another post you were with IC. I would like to get a hold of some old data, etc on the Mattoon - Evansville line, as I grew up on it.

ed

[gabe]

Also,

As I suggested earlier, you see this phenomenon so much with other short line and regional railroads, it is not just the Indiana Rail Road. Surely someone has addressed the potential for removing the cost of double switching right?

A poster formerly known as “Gabe”

[gabe]

Mike,

Thanks for your comments and insight. To my lament, I have never seen the Tulip trestle. I am not exactly certain how to get to it (I am told it is pretty much a poorly marked gravel road). Usually, I only have limited time, and the thought of hunting a train in Effingham or Linton always keeps me from searching too diligently.

Greyhounds,

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I am sure the power plant is what kept the IC in Newton; I have been told as much. But, I wonder now that both IC and IRR have access to it and that is not going to change, why doesn't the IC give the IRR trackage rights to Effingham. It would seem to improve operations for both railroads. I think your guess of #5 is the likely reason.

Great quote by the way.

A poster formerly known as "Gabe."

[greyhounds]

The "line rationalization" process at the ICG in the 1970's was pretty much chaos.

The VP of Law (Percy Johnson?) was a Southern Gentleman who didn't like making politicians mad - and a sure way to make a politician mad was to abandon a rail line in his/her territory. So it seemed Percy was very unsupportive of any actual studies of which lines should be shed.

The operating department may have had someone with a college degree in a top supervisory position, but I never met him. As one guy said to me, "around here, long range is six weeks." There were few "boat rockers". Most just kept on doing what they had always done.

The sales people just absolutely hated to go tell cutomers we might shut down a line, those sales folks were judged on how much they sold. Taking a line away from them was not something they liked.

And to use the words "marketing" and "railroad" in the same sentence was down
right inovative.

So basically, the ICG, being unable to maintain itself, just ran its branches into the ground. Then there was no choice. When someone actually suggested that we actually study which lines we should try to maintain and which we should just let go, that VP of Law expressed great fear that the memo would become public and suggested it shouldn't have been written.

I don't remember the specifics on the Indy Line sale/abandonment, but I do remember it was in bad shape physically.

I'd guess:

1) we had to get rid of the line because it was deteriorating and we couldn't fix it - no time for a study or real analysis

2) we kept the line out to Newton so we could serve the power plant.

3) we didn't let the Indiana Rail Road into the power plant.

4) we let them get too close and they got in anyway.

5) the CN couldn't care less about the carload interchange business at Newton.

The choice of Newton was just "grab" out of the air because of the power plant. Probably no other reason. Effficiency of interchange didn't enter the thought process.

One other great ICG quote: "Every year, winter catches the ICG by suprise."

[techguy57]

Gabe,
First off, good to see you back. As always I welcome the insight you bring to this forum.
As for the Indiana Rail Road, I have to admit that I am very intrigued with their operations myself. Got hooked after spending a summer working summer stock theatre in Bloomfield, IN.
There are a couple of thoughts I have about you questions. As for the power plant spur I'm guessing it was a relationship issue initially that has now been resolved. At the time the IRR's only option was to build a spur. Now it would simply be more economical for trackage rights. That what I was thinking but I could be way off base, though.
As for the question on Newton, I have to admit that I don't know enough to do any more than speculate. Effingham is a pretty major player in transit for Central Illinois despite being a moderately sized town. I'm wondering if both railroads weren't looking at the bigger picture of where the two towns are located geographically and the fact that Effingham has easy access to both I-57 and to I-70 as well. Just a thought,
Regardless, given your descriptions it seems that maybe they are due to reevaluate the situation sometime in the near future. On a different note, did you get to see the Tulip Trestle?

Mike

[gabe]

Once, when I was rail fanning the Indiana Rail Road, I followed the line from its Northern terminus in Indianapolis, Indiana to its Western Terminus in Newton, Illinois. Newton is a nice town, but it has me shaking my head every time I visit.

The Indiana RR interchange with the Illinois Central (now CN) is on the same ex-IC Effingham, IL – Indianapolis, IN line. The Indiana RR discharges its traffic (which is becoming significant) on a siding at Newton and on what little is left of the IC’s Freeport, IL - Evansville, IN line (I sorely miss it), and the IC picks it up.

Furthermore, just west of Newton, there is an Indiana RR spur (at least two miles) to a power plant. Less than one half mile to the west of this spur is the IC's spur off the same line to the same power plant.

I don't get it.

(1) The IC takes Indiana RR interchange traffic from Newton and delivers it to Effingham, where it is again discharged and switched with the Chicago - New Orleans main. Wouldn't it cut both RR’s cost of doing business for the IC to sell the remainder of its Indianapolis line west of Newton so the interchanged traffic would only have to be interchanged once (instead of once at Newton and once at Effingham)? I have seen the switching at Newton; it is not an expedient operation for either railroad?

If not sell the line, why not at least grant the Indiana RR trackage rights?

(2) Why didn't the IC and Indiana RR agree to use the same spur to the same power plant? If the Indiana RR was going to build the spur anyway and the IC couldn’t keep it from competing, wouldn't it have been cheaper for the Indiana RR to pay to use the IC spur and more lucrative for the IC to charge the Indiana RR to use it?

In the many excellent articles about short lines in Trains, I often see this phenomenon with Class 1 interactions with short lines. The Class 1 will often not sell the short line railroad or grant trackage rights for a short distance that would allow half of the switching and more efficient operations.

It seems to me that business rivalry is standing in the way of good business decisions. But, I am no expert. Any thoughts?

A poster formerly known as “Gabe”