Chicago Missouri and Western?

[gabe]

Does anyone know anything about this railroad? I found pictures of their locomotives recently, and don't know anything about it. I am told it is an ICG spinoff of an old Alton line? As this is the very heart of my railfanning interest, I am very disappointed in myself for not knowing anything about this.

Which Alton line did it take? I know the SP bought the St. Louis - Chicago Alton line from the IC and Gateway Western bought the Chicago - Kansas City Alton spinoff of the IC. So what does that leave?

I feel like I did last week when I thought an SD-45 was an SD-40-2, who knew there were SD-45 without flared ends? I should have payed more attention to the short porch though.

Gabe

[CShaveRR]

Actually it was the Alton line later operated by the SP. I don't have all of the details right here, but ICG sold it to the CM&W, which eventually went bankrupt.

[Anonymous]

Gabe, congrats on the stars. All I can tell you is that the last time I rode the St. Louis -KC train we were discussing last week - and this was probably 15 years ago - the Amtrak timetable identified the railraod as the CM&W.

Larry

[gabe]

Thanks Larry.

[gabe]

QUOTE: Originally posted by CShaveRR

Actually it was the Alton line later operated by the SP. I don't have all of the details right here, but ICG sold it to the CM&W, which eventually went bankrupt.

The entire Alton? Wow, I would like to see that tried again. I think that would make a decent regional railroad.

Gabe

[nanaimo73]

The Chicago, Missouri and Western had a nice paint scheme.

Too bad it didnt make it.

[greyhounds]

I knew several ex-ICG management types that went to the CM&W when it was spun off. They never had a chance. The bank(s) that financed the deal really took a bath.

I was at a conference on short line financing when I tried to politely ask a banker how such a mistake could occur - he replied "You mean, how could anybody be that stupid?" At a time when Latin America was defaulting on loans left and right, he said the deal was known in banking circles as "Brazil North".

The ICG retained the line south to the Joliet refineries. Basically, that was the only real freight on the Chicago-St. Louis line. The CM&W was left to try to make money running intermodal trains between those two points. At less than 300 miles this was a very dubious proposition.

The Kansas City line had some freight, but it also still had 90 pound rail and had been beaten into the ground as the ICG ran unit coal trains over the 90 pound rail.

I guess the lack of freight on the line harks back to a guy named Blackstone who headed the Alton for years. (source: "The Chicago & Alton Railroad" by Gene V. Glendinning) Blackstone didn't like interchange traffic. He concentrated the railroad on local business. This worked until the trucks took the local business because of its short length of haul.

The Alton Route then passed rapidly among owners, Union Pacific, B&O, GM&O, ICG, CM&W. The Chicago-St. Louis line is now back with the UP and once again, they don't seem to want it.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

In addition to keeping title to the line to just south of Joliet Union Depot, ICG gouged Venango River Corp on the price of the line. ICG also kept title to most of the trackage in the Metro East area.

Some additional fallout from the bankruptcy of Chicago, Missouri & Western was the bankruptcy of CSS&SB under Venango River ownership.

[mudchicken]

Gabe:
It was under CM&W auspices that the shops (Ex-GM&O) in Bloomington burned to the ground under some rather shady *circumstances. The Venango bunch, a mix of ICG and ATSF operating types, paid almost zero attention to the maintenance of the railroad, they just ran trains. (The undoing of many a shortline, you have to plow money back into the plant) When it finally dawned on them what they had bought into, it was too late and the plant was failing faster than they could raise income. The loss of several key bridges to washouts just sped-up the inevitable. Following the CMR&W debacle, key parts of the Venango bunch got involved in other misfortunes on a smaller scale.

The plant they bought was a mess from day 1. Track components were anything but standard and there was no reserve inventory/ spare parts for even simple maintenance and repair. IC had thrown every oddball and secondhand piece of trackwork it could find out on the old GM&O to keep its core lines in better condition and easier to maintain. SP and later UP have thrown bucketloads of cash at this line to undo the damage and they are far from complete.

* Rather odd that most of the railroad's records went up in flames with the shops.

[Anonymous]

All that went up in flames was pld Alton and GM&O records. Everything else written above is pretty much true. I have some old HO scale logos if anyone is interested. They're dry transfers. They wanted me to paint 100 HO GP 38s to give to customers. I painted 40.
The CM&W's logo, appearing like that of the CA&E was no coincidence. That was me...

Mitch

[CarlHa]

Gabe,

There has been alot of investment in this line by UP, along with Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) and others. UP has been upgrading the right of way and signals, in preparation for high speed passenger service between Chicago and St Louis. It has been a test bed for Positive Train Control. They even ran a short test (10 miles) just north of Bloomington IL using Amtrack equipment at speeds of 110 mph. High speed service on this line has not become a reality due to a lack of funding for trainsets.

Its been interesting to see the resources, and I assume money, that has been put into the line. I always wondered if this was the best use of UP's time, money, and resources at a time when these things were needed in other parts of their system. I'm guessing that the contrubutions from others (IDOT, et all), and the opportunity to get experience with PTC technology made it worthwhile.

As for traffic today on the line... Amtracks including the Texas Eagle, locals, interchange with other railroads, and some run through by other railroads.

In the days before UP there was more traffic and greater variety. When the SP owned it this was their only route to Chicago. At one time there were tachonite trains on their way running between Minnesota and Utah. When UP came along much of the non-local traffic was diverted to other UP routes.

I also have heard that UP keeps the line as a contingency, in case they have problems in other part of their system and need to divert trains over our line. Its always interesting to see the volume and mix of trains change when this happens.

From a historical perspective, the Chicago & ALton had a significant yard and shops in town. In the days of steam, it is said that they had never built a new locomotive BUT they had the equiptment and labor to repair any part on one.

The yard remains, but most of the shop have been demolished.

There is book from a local author about the Chigago & Alton in Bloomington IL. Its a good read about the railroad and its presence in town. It provides some facts and figures, but is primarily interviews with different railroad employees. If you need more information let me know.

[Anonymous]

that answers some of my questions about this line...chicago to st. louie. i was curious as to why there were 4 crossing gates at each crossing instead of the normal 2. it looks like a pretty high tech little piece of railroad nowadays.

[mudchicken]

QUOTE: Originally posted by artmark

All that went up in flames was pld Alton and GM&O records. Everything else written above is pretty much true. I have some old HO scale logos if anyone is interested. They're dry transfers. They wanted me to paint 100 HO GP 38s to give to customers. I painted 40.
The CM&W's logo, appearing like that of the CA&E was no coincidence. That was me...

Mitch

Mitch: From one that did a considerable amount of RCRA work in the yard at Bloomington and needed Venango and predecessor data to appease EPA.....some of those records were more than "just old GM&O/Aton records".[:D]

[MP173]

Gabe:

This was (is) in your backyard! The old GM&O was a good route from Chicago to St. Louis, running several passenger trains. In the 50's ran the 284 miles in 5 hours 10 minutes, not bad...an average of 55mph with six stops total.

Back in the 90's when I travelled Northern Illinois frequently I would stay at Bloomington and go explore the yards and shop. There was a neat station (bilevel) in town and a cabin which protected the NS crossing.

Today the CPL signals are slowly disappearing. The Ridgely Tower in Springfield still remains in operation. Next time you are back in the area, you should go check it out.

I still recall the Bloomington local would often have DRGW units. What a treat.

I agree with others, not much business on line.

However, I have noticed the branchline up to Jacksonville has service. Dont know the industry in town, but there is some switching going on.

ed

[greyhounds]

QUOTE: Originally posted by tomtrain

Does NS serve the auto assembly plant at Bloomington exclusively? Does any of that traffic travel on the ex-Alton line?

I've figured that the Chi-StL line would be an excellent route to convert to HST. Straight with little freight. 300 miles. Lots of population and travel. Just plain have the Japanese build it and run it, and tie it into O'Hare, Midway, and Lambert airports. Then extend it up from O'Hare and the Loop to Milwaukee. Dreaming on...

From what I know, the auto plant is an exclusive NS show. And that plant is down on its knees. Mitsubishi (SP?) is in the tank. Cut production at the plant from two to one shift per day. They used to build Dodge and Mitsubishi there. Then Dodge pulled out. Then Mitsubishi cut production in half.

As for high speed passenger, the trains go right though the heart of cities like Springfield and Pontiac. Over, under, around; but not through. Cost a bundle for new routes around and Illinois certainly doesn't have the money - they can't even fund their state employees' pension plans.

I don't see a need for HST in the Midwest. I'd settle for train service in the Midwest. One train a day between Minneapolis and Chicago. Three trains a day between Chicago and St. Louis. No trains to Green Bay. No trains to Des Moines. Come on guys. Get serious or go away.

[mudchicken]

QUOTE: Originally posted by tomtrain

Does NS serve the auto assembly plant at Bloomington exclusively? Does any of that traffic travel on the ex-Alton line?

I've figured that the Chi-StL line would be an excellent route to convert to HST. Straight with little freight. 300 miles. Lots of population and travel. Just plain have the Japanese build it and run it, and tie it into O'Hare, Midway, and Lambert airports. Then extend it up from O'Hare and the Loop to Milwaukee. Dreaming on...

Mitsubishi Plant is on the old NKP/ NS served only.....very little (if any) interchange at Bloomington. Old Bloomington GM&O yard was to be a Mitsubishi auto loadout and then the economy went south. Some of the yard now a grain loadout. Other parts slated for industrial redevelopment. One part is now a Children's Museum. Illinois DOT and the locals put intermodal center at (ab)Normal to the north of the Bloomington depot. Rather amusing to watch tranportation engineers (Highway engineers in drag) mess-up the concept of intermodal with state and local monies. [V][V][V]

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken

QUOTE: Originally posted by artmark

All that went up in flames was pld Alton and GM&O records. Everything else written above is pretty much true. I have some old HO scale logos if anyone is interested. They're dry transfers. They wanted me to paint 100 HO GP 38s to give to customers. I painted 40.
The CM&W's logo, appearing like that of the CA&E was no coincidence. That was me...

Mitch

Mitch: From one that did a considerable amount of RCRA work in the yard at Bloomington and needed Venango and predecessor data to appease EPA.....some of those records were more than "just old GM&O/Aton records".[:D]

Woo. I was unaware of that. I remember a lot of stuff going between the Chicago office and Michigan City. The Venango Group rented a lavish set of suites and floors on Dearborn Street and I was under the impression all relevant documents ended up there.
Mitch

[daveklepper]

I well remember the wine red and light red GM&O Chicago - St. Louis trains, some handling through MP-TP cars for Texas. Heavyweight six-wheel truck slightly modernized (outside) diners with excellent chicken dinners and good food in general. Three trains each way duirng the day plus the overnight Owl with sleeper, which came off when the Pullman left the business. But I believe the three day trains continiued until Amtrak and were the only Chicago - St. Louis trains at the time. Earlier, the Wabash and the Illinois Central itself (Green Diamond) gave competition. Power was always E-7's, and I d on't remember any E-8's. There were also some Joliet - Chicago commuter trains but nothing like the intensive service on the Roack Island. At that time the MP used the GM&O as its connection to Chicago for freight, so there was business, but I am not sure that continued after the GM&O merged into the IC.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by daveklepper

I well remember the wine red and light red GM&O Chicago - St. Louis trains, some handling through MP-TP cars for Texas. Heavyweight six-wheel truck slightly modernized (outside) diners with excellent chicken dinners and good food in general. Three trains each way duirng the day plus the overnight Owl with sleeper, which came off when the Pullman left the business. But I believe the three day trains continiued until Amtrak and were the only Chicago - St. Louis trains at the time. Earlier, the Wabash and the Illinois Central itself (Green Diamond) gave competition. Power was always E-7's, and I d on't remember any E-8's. There were also some Joliet - Chicago commuter trains but nothing like the intensive service on the Roack Island. At that time the MP used the GM&O as its connection to Chicago for freight, so there was business, but I am not sure that continued after the GM&O merged into the IC.

I believe that after the Mail was discontinued in '70,the only GM&O trains left were the Limited and the Abe Lincoln until Amtrak.
I remember a lot of E8s and 9s on the Green Diamond, sometimes one of the 6s. Usually in an A-B lashup.

At the inception of Amtrak the GM&O was the only service between Chicago and St Louis. Trains on the N&W (Wabash) had been cut to Decatur, and the IC's Green Diamond had been cut to Springfield and became the Governor's Special in '68.

Mitch

[dmoore74]

QUOTE: I believe that after the Mail was discontinued in '70,the only GM&O trains left were the Limited and the Abe Lincoln until Amtrak.

Checked my April 1971 Official Railway Guide. There was a third train, The Midnight Special.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dmoore74

QUOTE: I believe that after the Mail was discontinued in '70,the only GM&O trains left were the Limited and the Abe Lincoln until Amtrak.

Checked my April 1971 Official Railway Guide. There was a third train, The Midnight Special.

Thanks and you're right. It was the RPO car itself that left the Midnight in '70 I believe.
I stand corrected, and sit comfortably.

Mitch

[nanaimo73]

Didn't the Gateway Western have a problem with their bridge over the Missouri River, near Mexico, MO?

[gabe]

(1) As for what happened to the bridge over the Mississippi, the biggest flood of the last 200 years happened, and it litterally took the bridge with it.

(2) Primarily to Greyhounds, but anyone else who might be able to contribute:

I guess you are saying a Alton Route Regional would not work today? I believe you, (sigh) but I was kind of hoping it could be a Wisconsin Central like regional, I know it is connected to many industrial areas.

I knew its 300 mile route made intermodal a questionable proposition, but . . . . Alas.

Gabe

[Anonymous]

Back in the 1980's when I was working in flour milling, we received a CMNW boxcr for sacked loading. We mistakenly took it for a CNW car, wrote CNW on all the paperwork. Talk about starting a billing error mess. Actually this was quite common w/shippers as they were doing the same. I never knew what this CMNW was until readinga issue of Trains a few yrs back.

[jabrown1971]

The CMNW ran Joliet-St Louis, Kansas City-Roodhouse-St Louis, and Roodhouse-Jacksonville-Springfield-Chicago. Amtrak at one time considered rerouting it's trains Chicago-Champaign-Tolono-Decatur-St Louis due to poor track conditions. The SP eventually bought the main link between St Louis and Joliet, the Gateway Western took the rest. This was the only SP owned line directly to Chicago, however the SP also had trackage rights over the BN from KC thru Quincy, Il to Chicago

[greyhounds]

QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe

(1) As for what happened to the bridge over the Mississippi, the biggest flood of the last 200 years happened, and it litterally took the bridge with it.

(2) Primarily to Greyhounds, but anyone else who might be able to contribute:

I guess you are saying a Alton Route Regional would not work today? I believe you, (sigh) but I was kind of hoping it could be a Wisconsin Central like regional, I know it is connected to many industrial areas.

I knew its 300 mile route made intermodal a questionable proposition, but . . . . Alas.

Gabe

Well, look at the cities on the route.

Pontiac and Dwight are prison towns. Pontiac has an Illinois maximum security facility, Dwight has the Illinois Prison for Women. Bloomington-Normal is a university town (Illinois State) with a failing auto plant on another rail line. Springfield (State Capital) is chock full 'O politicains and little else. They think the way to solve a budget crunch is to not fund the state's pension plan. Ain't gonna' work - what are they goning to do next year? I'd hate to be counting on a pension from Illinois right now.

Little freight to haul in or out. South of Springfield the line has replaced the old C&NW route to St. Louis, so things are OK.

(Ever hear of the "Monkey Girls", the women in Sprinfield who hang on to their jobs with their tails.) I was riding an excursion over the C&IM years ago. On the way to my hotel in Springfield the cab driver solicited me for a "for hire" woman. I've never had that happen anywhere else. (I did decline the offer.)

The line does cut through some of the best farm land in the world. (McLean County). But it's within trucking distance of the Illinois River barges. Even if they do get unit trains to the Gulf, they've only got them for 150 miles or so.

I fought that intermodal thingy for years. I was in intermodal marketing/pricing for the ICG when we had the "Slingshots" - which were supposed to be short, fast, frequent intermodal trains between Chicago and St. Louis. Virtually every shipper wanted their freight on the same train. You can run an intermodal train out of St. Louis to Chicago at 8:00 AM. It will be empty.

The 11:00 PM departure, that will deliver the next morning in Chicago, will leave trailers behind for lack of capacity. This will PO the shipper and he'll call Highiron the next time he has a load. Eventually, you'll PO enough shippers and your capacity problem will solve itself.

[XG01X]

Traffic isn't dead but not jumping either.
Major source of traffic is the Cargill bean plant in Bloomington. ICG killed this traffic off(It was Purina back then) CMNW tried to revive and SP got it going. Good steady traffic there though. Elevators in Cayuga and pontaic ship unit trains of grain(not sure how often), couple of elevators south of bloomington ship grain. Lincoln has a cardboard plant and glass plant that both get service daily. Add a place in Carlinville that gets steel and Midstates warehouse in Springfield that gets Potash unit trains. So south of Bloomington the GMO is not dead, but north of bloomington is lala land.
IMO there was an unpatched SP GP60 and GE B23-7 that I think got patched running the local. The best thing would be if UP trains down the line from LPC in Joliet(doubt it with Global III) But with a connection off the BNSF at Edelstein in the works the exGMO south of Springfield will get busier
The KCS exGWWR line to KC(The line the GMO never wanted by the way) has a fair amount of traffic too. KCS and CN were trying to run auto parts trains but UP and NS nixed that idea
This site has some great pics;
http://skipg.homeip.net/gallery/CMW?page=1
Check out the track in this one
http://skipg.homeip.net/gallery/album127/AMTK_1442
Last thing is I also heard they are adding another Amtrak train in the morning

[XG01X]

The industry in Jacksonville is Pactiv (exMobil Chemical) the get plastic granules around eight more or less a day; I have only chased it two times. Back in the GMo days jacksonville handled alot of LCL.
Anybody remember the SP intermodal trains that came through in early 90's?

[Anonymous]

It was fun to see pix of the CM&W units on the link above. I enjoyed creating that color scheme. The CM&W insignia started as an in-house joke. It's a knock-off of the CA&E insignia. I contacted the GM&O Historical Society to get the formula for the maroon color. The red stripe was Scotchlite stock cut in the pattern of the South Shore Line's stripe that I designed. I borrowed that same stripe design, and altered it, from one that I created for the last Milwaukee Road scheme. The numberboards were of the same stock and typeface as Milwaukee Road's as I felt it was a modern, yet styled, face. Easy to read as it's white numerals on a black background.

Mitch

[SD60MAC9500]

greyhounds

The Kansas City line had some freight, but it also still had 90 pound rail and had been beaten into the ground as the ICG ran unit coal trains over the 90 pound rail.


The Alton Route then passed rapidly among owners, Union Pacific, B&O, GM&O, ICG, CM&W. The Chicago-St. Louis line is now back with the UP and once again, they don't seem to want it.

 

SP getting all of the CM&W, would have certainly made avoiding St. Louis via Springfield a bonus. Upgrading the KC line could have gave ATSF, a run for its money. Today UP doesn't care to route LA-CHI IM traffic through TRRA, due to cost. So up the old Rock from KCMO, via Nevada IA, or ATSF, trackage rights has to do.