EJE in West Chicago

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know about how many trains the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern operates through West Chicago and when they go through?

[Soo2610]

Tom, not very many. I was out there for eight hours one day last summer with my boys taking photos along the UP and only one EJ&E went through. Surprisingly enough it was a north bound unit coal train being pulled by all D&RG power of all things! Have caught a couple of northbound trains at about 8:00 pm in South Barrington.

[Anonymous]

Regulary scheduled service; usually twice a day.. ie. The Waukegan Turn is called out of Joliet after 10 pm to go Waukegan serving all interchanges on the Western sub-division; it'll almost always have interchange for the Northwestern (Sorry, but I worked for the J when we had more than 1 or 2 mega-giant railroads as partners...)Crew would be working in Wst Chgo after midnight.... Crew goes on to Waukegan, lays up and then returns back to Joliet the next day and will pick cars at West Chgo if CNW has left anything since the last pick up... Maybe an occasional unit coal train and in the winter depending on lake conditions and US Steel desires, occassional taconite trains down from Duluth.
In the 60-80's, there was a second nightly train called the Spaulding turn which ran up to the Milw Rd interchange at Spaulding(Elgin) and on their way back to Joliet , they would switch Wst Chicago. Don't know if they run a Spaulding turn anymore... Used to be 2-3 weekly Powder River coal trains but think thats been moved over to BN at Eola

Bottom line: not a lot of action and most likely when most of us are in bed...

For current operations, check out: http://eje.raifan.net