Brian (IA) http://blhanel.rrpicturearchives.net.
blhanel wrote:Thanks, Dave, for looking at them! I'm sorry I can't provide a good perspective of now vs. 1952 (I've only been on the scene here since 1974), but that's been long enough to see many changes- the abandonments of two mainlines through town (Rock Island to the south and Milwaukee Road east/west), several secondary lines, and the changing of hands several times of the former Illinois Central line out of Dubuque/Manchester, which is now CNIC. It is true that there is a group in town that is working towards re-establishing some commuter service between CR and Iowa City, but I'm not holding my breath. For one thing, such talk always revives memories amongst the senior set of the last such service dubbed the "Vomit Comet". Getting past that image will be the highest hurdle this group will face, I believe. Another factor, the traffic situation on I-380, is not that bad in my opinion. Sure, it gets busy during rush hours, but you don't see the LA and Chicago-style slowdowns to 10 MPH or slower. To overcome the effects of those factors would require a major upgrade to the CRANDIC line direct between CR and IC such that it could handle high-speed traffic- and right now it hardly sees ANY (most interchanges with IAIS go via the former C&NW line down through the Amanas). The line you rode on is now used by the Iowa Northern, which has maybe two trains a day at most.
Psst, Brian, that's the former Milwaukee line down through the Amanas.
Jeff
jeffhergert wrote: blhanel wrote:Thanks, Dave, for looking at them! I'm sorry I can't provide a good perspective of now vs. 1952 (I've only been on the scene here since 1974), but that's been long enough to see many changes- the abandonments of two mainlines through town (Rock Island to the south and Milwaukee Road east/west), several secondary lines, and the changing of hands several times of the former Illinois Central line out of Dubuque/Manchester, which is now CNIC. It is true that there is a group in town that is working towards re-establishing some commuter service between CR and Iowa City, but I'm not holding my breath. For one thing, such talk always revives memories amongst the senior set of the last such service dubbed the "Vomit Comet". Getting past that image will be the highest hurdle this group will face, I believe. Another factor, the traffic situation on I-380, is not that bad in my opinion. Sure, it gets busy during rush hours, but you don't see the LA and Chicago-style slowdowns to 10 MPH or slower. To overcome the effects of those factors would require a major upgrade to the CRANDIC line direct between CR and IC such that it could handle high-speed traffic- and right now it hardly sees ANY (most interchanges with IAIS go via the former C&NW line down through the Amanas). The line you rode on is now used by the Iowa Northern, which has maybe two trains a day at most. Psst, Brian, that's the former Milwaukee line down through the Amanas. Jeff
Oops. Shows you how much I pay attention or research.
Dale, I dunno, I guess anything is possible. I'm not sure that CRANDIC even ventures in to Iowa City anymore, as the IAIS handles the interchange at the new yard they've built just south of Beverly.
I've heard the Crandic still goes down there original line as needed. I know there was a few active customers at North Liberty.
Since the IAIS is interchanging at Beverly and operating the road trains in and out, does the Crandic venture down towards Amana? There were a couple of active or semi-active customers at Fairfax and Walford. Who switches them when needed? Technically, I think the IAIS only has trackage rights from Yocum to Beverly (Actually I think it is called Dows Yard, the sign is engraved on a rock, pretty fancy) I've heard from a friend in Amana that the refrigeration plant may start using rail again also.
There were customers on the Crandic at Iowa City/Coralville, too. Does the Crandic have an engine down there? When I make it back that way, I tend to focus on the IAIS more than the CIC.
PS, the IAIS fairly recently moved their corporate office from Iowa City to Cedar Rapids. I think the Iowa Northern has done the same.
I'm the second-shift Paramedic here at Amana Refrigeration. I'll see if I can find someone who can verify/deny the thought of rail service returning to the plant. I know they've had days (and nights) sweating bullets waiting for "just in time" delivery of coil steel...so it "could" be possible, in theory. I've been told the steel goes by rail from Mexico to Marshalltown, then is loaded onto trucks for the haul to the plant. I don't get out back of the plant very often, so not sure how much of the track is left. I do know that where it used to actually come into the building, is gone...no evidence rail cars ever would've been in here. I'd like to see them go back to rail, but being on the other side of the facility, I'd probably never get to see it. Whirlpool has stated they will dump some bucks into the place...maybe returning rail service is included?!?!
Fairfax and Walford are switched by the IAIS. Once in a rare while, if the planets align just right...I do get to see the IAIS running on that line. A tank car of, I think, asphalt; was set-out in Walford a few weeks ago. CRANDIC still does the MOW stuff on the line, they have a tie gang and surfacing gang out there now.
Hope this helps!
Chris Umscheid
Paramedic Specialist, Amana Refrigeration Products
The Cedar cRapids Industrial Branch: Proudly Shipping Yesterday's CrunchBerries Tomorrow!
Thanks Brian!
Really like your pics, by the way.
Actually, I've posted before...under the "old" forums, I was CUFFEMTP, with a whopping 8 posts. I don't post/reply very often, usually whatever I would say is/was already said by someone else... The drive is about 52 miles each way, and I usually get to see something on the rails. LOTS of new signals going up, lots of new crossovers going in. I really miss the CNW...but have come to accept the UP as an undeniable, unchangable fact of life.
Back to Amana, According to the storm water run-off plans, the grade for the siding "should" still be in place, coming off a passing siding (or two). There is at least one passing siding still along the main, I can see a line of tank cars (probably for ADM) sitting out there. They have a collection of aerial photos taken over the years...it's clear that at one time, they were a good customer to the RI. I can't really tell when rail service ended however. One seasoned gent working there has told me of the "fun" they used to have loading boxcars. When they switched to trucks, I think a collective "Snoopy dance" ensued!
Any IAIS experts or RI experts out there that can add to this? These are only my relatively uninformed observations!
I was born/raised in Cedar Rapids...have memories of standing on the steps of the old library (now the art museum) downtown and watching the infamous 4th St. switching boondoggles (pull ahead, block every crossing in downtown...sit for a small eternity, back up, stop, pull ahead again...repeat for another small eternity bringing the entire downtown area to an absolute traffic standstill). When I-380 was being built (this will "date" me), a buddy and I would meet the daily ICG northbound at 42nd St., and pedal like heck on our bikes to pace the train to the HWY 100 overpass. Some nights, we'd make it just in time to get blasted by the exhaust of the crusty old geeps passing underneath. I missed most of the local action: RI, MILW, IC, WLO. By the time I started hunting/chasing trains in 1987, we were down to CNW, CC (which I didn't "discover" until '88), IANR, and CRANDIC. The original, un-improved trail around Cedar Lake was a daily destination during my college years, especially in the late afternoon as I could watch CNW Job 23 and 24 working, the CRANDIC transfer to the CC, and the CC daily turn assembling for its trip North. LOTS of pics from this era...and the inspiration for the small layout I'm hoping to start building some decade.
*sigh*
The good old days...
Anyone else out there care to elaborate on the Greater Cedar Rapids area??
Stay SAFE...
Paramedic Specialist
AmanaMedic wrote: I was born/raised in Cedar Rapids...have memories of standing on the steps of the old library (now the art museum) downtown and watching the infamous 4th St. switching boondoggles (pull ahead, block every crossing in downtown...sit for a small eternity, back up, stop, pull ahead again...repeat for another small eternity bringing the entire downtown area to an absolute traffic standstill).
I was born/raised in Cedar Rapids...have memories of standing on the steps of the old library (now the art museum) downtown and watching the infamous 4th St. switching boondoggles (pull ahead, block every crossing in downtown...sit for a small eternity, back up, stop, pull ahead again...repeat for another small eternity bringing the entire downtown area to an absolute traffic standstill).
LOL, I have a similar very distinct memory, was stuck waiting for same back in January 2000 while trying to get my son to a TCR play rehearsal. When the very long line of covered hoppers were finally backed into the yard, I discovered that they were being pushed in by a trio of DM&E Geeps, which obviously had pushed alot of snow around in transit to CR, assuming they came down the Iowa Northern line.
Thanks!
On the rare occasion I think I've got something worth contributing...I just might!
Chris Umscheid, AKA: "Lucky"
"LOL, I have a similar very distinct memory, was stuck waiting for same back in January 2000 while trying to get my son to a TCR play rehearsal. When the very long line of covered hoppers were finally backed into the yard, I discovered that they were being pushed in by a trio of DM&E Geeps" src="/trccs/emoticons/icon_smile_shock.gif">, which obviously had pushed alot of snow around in transit to CR, assuming they came down the Iowa Northern line."
This memory is even better...its back from the days when they still had multiple tracks down the 4th St. corridor, with two trains working at the same time. I faintly recall a CNW SW or NW unit dying, alongside the 3rd Ave. parkade, with a long cut of cars. LOTS of smoke from what had to have been re-starts. Heck, I was probably 7 or 8 at the time...so who knows what was going on. I also remember a very poor looking MILW F-unit (recognized it from my Lionel catalogs) at the East end of their yard, just about to the crossing at Center Point Road. I've even got the memory of catching a fleeting glimpse of a red/yellow RI switcher shoving towards the National Oats plant.
Dang!
Where did all the good stuff go???
By the time I started seriously hunting trains (1987), it was just CNW, CC, CRANDIC, and IANR. Still, a heck of a lot more variety than what we've got today...or did it just seem that way??
Lucky
MP173 wrote:Has ADM opened their car repair shop in CR yet? ed
The Milwaukee Road switched the Amana plant. To the best of my recollection, The Milw jobs came down from Marion. It seems like one came down in the afternoon, switched the plant, went to supper and then went back later in the evening to do some more switching. My first cab ride was on this Milw job. Rode from the depot over to the plant, 2miles more or less one way.
They may have came down twice a day. Or the other train could'be been the regular locals between Marion and Ottumwa. In the last Milw days, there was no thru train. They ran turns from either end going as far as needed and then returning to their origin.
The Crandic took over in 1980 when the Milwaukee cut back it's operation. They wouldn't or couldn't come down daily. The refrigeration bought their own switch engine and the Crandic came down, I think 3 times a week at first, then as needed. It seems like it didn't last long. At the time, about half of the plant's production had been going to Kansas City for interchange to other railroads. I don't know if the loss of a more direct line caused a drop in traffic. The trucking industry was also going through changes about that time. I think it was a combination of factors that led to the loss interest in rail service.
"The Milwaukee Road switched the Amana plant."
Thanks Jeff!
See where assumptions gets a guy?
I'm betting that they accessed the plant on tracks that no longer exist... I was just informed that what we refer to as "the 4 corners" (a major intersection inside the plant) used to be tracks...and outside. Time to sneak away from the Bandaid Station and find the pics in the conference room...
Chris
My high school year books have overhead pictures of the plant. In one book, you can see a pair of Milw F units switching the plant.
If you can, ask if they still have their Alco switch engine. I heard they kept it after they paved over the tracks/added on just in case. That was years ago, so they may no longer have it.
Before the Alco, they had a small center cab, but wasn't enough power to switch with. That I think they sold off when they got the Alco.
Riding the CRANDIC Seeing the backside of the Corridor, with waves By Steve Gravelle In the summer of 1933, the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railway, the CRANDIC, offered six trains a day in each direction between its namesake cities. The 27.25-mile ride from downtown to downtown took about an hour, with 15 stops along the way. In the summer of 2006, Dennis Taylor and Jesse Comer make the round trip in 10 hours, with a bit of luck, rocking and rolling about 20 mph ahead of a string of dusty, rusty workaday freight cars: boxcars, a flatcar carrying lumber, and several hoppers, rolling bins loaded with grain and plastic pellets. "Got a little bit of everything today," Taylor says as Engines 111 and 114 lean into the load, tugging 12 cars up the from the switching yard off Rockford Road SW. It's almost exactly 2 p.m. on a still, warm day. Hammering diesel engines drown out locusts buzzing in the deep trackside brush. As the train approaches a grade crossing, the locomotive's warning bell clanks and the horn, mounted right overhead, drowns out everything else. Taylor and Comer, a CRANDIC engineer and conductor, are today's crew for Job 13, the railroad's designation for the run delivering and collecting cars from customers as far south as Hills, six miles south of Iowa City on the railroad's original 1904 main line. Running when business requires - lately an average of about twice a week - Job 13 is a welcome change from Taylor and Comer's usual routine pulling and pushing cars into and out of Cedar Rapids industries. "It's actually a nice ride, down to Iowa City," Taylor says. The first few miles are urban industrial. Job 13 skirts warehouses and grain elevators and Hawkeye Downs, where a crew tending to a racing car looks up and waves. There's a lot of that, waving. Helmeted children on bicycles, their parents, motorists waiting behind lowered crossing gates, a shirtless man mowing the fields at the Kirkwood Softball Complex. If they're not busy, Taylor and Comer reciprocate - after all, waving at people from the train is even more fun that waving at the train. Engine 111's cab doors are propped open for a breeze to flow through the cab. As Job 13 creaks across the bridge over the thin flow of Prairie Creek, there's the thick, oily smell of creosote, the petroleum preservative applied to the wooden crossties and bridge timbers. Taylor waves at another crew switching cars at the massive ADM complex off Waconia Avenue as Job 13 starts up the hill. At 2:25, Job 13 rolls between long ranks of hoppers and tankers outside ADM - empty cars awaiting loading, loaded cars awaiting to be hauled off by CRANDIC. Crossing 66th Ave. SW, the track curves west through a dense stand of oak and maple. Job 13 crests the hill at Tharp Road at 2:44. The noise lessens as Taylor eases off the throttle and applies the brakes as the train starts down the grade, to keep the speed around 20 mph. Low-hanging branches scrape the cab as the train coasts through Swisher,drowsing in the mid-day heat. For a few miles, the scenery is rural: corn and soybeans broken by the occasional grove of hardwoods where deer sleep through the midafternoon heat. Startled by the sudden, rumbling iron monster, a young buck thrashes through the undergrowth and bounds off across a field. Job 13 crosses the Iowa River, ducks under Interstate 380, and rolls into North Liberty about 75 minutes after leaving Cedar Rapids. The day's work includes delivering the carload of lumber to BCI Lumber and a hopper of plastic pellets to Centro Plastics, but it's not as easy as it sounds. To get the right car to the right loading dock, Taylor and Comer plan their moves before Comer pulls on heavy work gloves and hits the ground. "That's the hardest part," Taylor explains as Job 13 shuffles cars, pulling back and forth over a couple of grade crossings as traffic waits. "Getting it all in the right order." It takes an hour of shuttling back and forth, interrupting traffic on two intersecting streets, before Comer climbs back aboard, sweating. About 35 minutes after leaving North Liberty, the train is crossing the University of Iowa campus. Minus the hour or so at North Liberty, it's about three hours of running time from Cedar Rapids. The miles through Oakdale and Coralville are suburban: condominiums under construction, backyards in varying degrees of maintenance, cooks and waiters sneaking a smoke behind the restaurants along the Coralville Strip. In fact, the view along the CRANDIC route is pretty much the view one sees from any train, anywhere in mid-America. There's even a graveyard of rusted automobiles along the tracks in southwest Cedar Rapids. It's America's neglected backside, usually messier than the manicured display it turns toward the highway. It's also usually a truer, more real view, and not without its appeal. But is it enough to draw sufficient riders to justify a new investment in passenger service? It'd be nice," Taylor said. "With the way gas prices are, I think it would be a good thing. We don't use that (route) often - a couple of times a week."
Jeff,
I'll see what I can come up with. I can probably find some "old heads" that wouldn't mind some odd questions from the goofy paramedic... *grin*
Its hard to say just what-all could be tucked away out there. I've heard this place has 2 million square feet under the roof.
blhanel wrote:Once my fingers quit cramping (probably tomorrow night), I might type up the other article he wrote.
Thanks for the Steve Gravelle "Riding the Crandic" story.
Traveled bus Jerusalem - Ramla, train Ramla - Haifa - Ramla, bus Razmla-Jerusalem yesterday.
Anyone interested in complete report can email me at daveklepper@yahoo.com, and the report will be sent by return email.
Things are normal in Jerusalem and appear so in Tel Aviv and Ramla. Not much population in Haifa and the libraries closed at the Technion (actually, the reason for the planned trip) with synagogue the only building open. All day saw only two damaged building north of Atlit, none in Haifa.
No passsenger service north of the Haifa Hof-Carmel (southern of the three Haifa stations) and probably none south of Rehovot on the Ashdot-Ashkolon line, but others operating normally or near normally. Used the very basic and sparse bus system operating in Haifa.
Arab teenagers continue to be the (Kosher) food venders on Israel Railways.
After some LONG shifts here at Amana with lots of heat cases...things finally Q****ed down (don't want to jinx myself!), and I got to chat with some folks. They did have a switcher, sounds like it is long gone. Tracks at one time ran "all the way through the building," and "everything went by rail." One guy thinks they "should" go back to getting the steel by rail...but doesn't see it happening. It sounds like he doesn't think "the railroads" are reliable enough with on time delivery. Then again, the "just in time" truckers haven't been doing so good lately either.
From what I've seen, you'd never know that rail cars were ever in here, and if not for the grade out back leading to the IAIS; you wouldn't know that tracks even came here.
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how it all worked: RI tracks on the South side, and MILW switch jobs servicing the plant. Did MILW have trackage rights on the RI? Or, did the MILW have a spur off of their line?
I've got to look at the pics in the conf. room, just can't be out of my little bandaid shop long enough to get there. Sick and hurt people can be so inconvenient, you know...
Chris, AKA: "Lucky"
2nd shift medic in the land of refrigerators
AmanaMedic wrote:After some LONG shifts here at Amana with lots of heat cases...
After some LONG shifts here at Amana with lots of heat cases...
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