greyhounds wrote: How 'bout Brown and Orange back to back E's with Green Diamonds in the weeds on the Havana branch on May 14, 1966. One of them is the #4023, the other appears to be an E6 (can't make out the number) with a banged up nose/Green Diamond. Photos in Havana, Mason City, Lincoln and Clinton. Railfan excursion that I managed to talk my parents into allowing me to ride.
How 'bout Brown and Orange back to back E's with Green Diamonds in the weeds on the Havana branch on May 14, 1966.
One of them is the #4023, the other appears to be an E6 (can't make out the number) with a banged up nose/Green Diamond. Photos in Havana, Mason City, Lincoln and Clinton.
Railfan excursion that I managed to talk my parents into allowing me to ride.
Greyhounds,
You have my undivided attention. IC's Havahna line has always interested me--although at first, I have to admit, I was like "Havahna, the Chicago, Illinois and Midland serves Havahna not the IC. Then I remembered that IC once had an East-West line serving Havahna.
Surely it did not have passenger service? What was the freight service like? When was it pulled? What lines did it work in conjunction with? Did it primarily serve as a feeder the the Chi-NO main? Or did it primarily work of the Gilman main? Or the Peoria main? That line and the Bloomer line--which fortunately still exists under different ownership--have always had a certain interest for me that I just never got around to fully exploring.
Gabe
P.S. That would be an interesting picture.
And, I'll add my favoite ICG experience.
I was a young management (marketing) guy learning the ropes. I was riding CC-6 east from Waterloo to Chicago.
The engineer was an elderly man with, if I recall correctly, nine trips left until retirement. I just said hello to the head end crew and went back to the 2nd Geep. We came out of Waterloo with a decent sized train of about 70 cars of mixed freight and four Geeps. It was night. I just settled in with my thermous of coffee and expected nothing out of the ordinay.
I don't know how many times that engineer had been back and forth between Waterloo and Freeport, but he sure knew what he was doing. He took us up to 69 MPH with that freight train. The wheel slip light in the 2nd Geep came on and I figured we were going to wreck. I thought an axle had locked up, the wheels were sliding, and we were headed for the ditch. Nope. As I understand things, the engines were governed at that speed and would cut out at 69 MPH. So our speed would drop to 67, the engines would come back on line, and we'd go right back up to 69. The wheel slip light came on when all this happened.
This was for mile after mile through the Iowa night He just kept the locomotives wide open. He didn't slow down until he had to descend the hill into Dubuque. Then we climbed out of the Mississippi River sag and rolled through Galena in the full moon. I'd never seen Galena before. It's an old town, built before the Civil War (U.S. Grant called it home) and it remains somewhat as it was. The rail line is on a ridge, somewhat above the center of town. It was a nice ending to a wild ride.
The rest of the trip into Chicago was unevenful.
jeaton wrote: gabe wrote: jeaton wrote: However, I'd offer this analogy. If you were to find a very valuble painting in the attic of your house and received mega-bucks for the painting at auction, what would you do with the funds? Cash in a coffee can buried in the back yard, where it might get eaten by grubs? Or, cash invested in businesses with good prospects for profits and growth? Jay I would buy a picture of IC E-units overtaking a IC coal drag just outside of Ramsey, Illinois . . . get a real return on my investment. Gabe There could well be such a picture, maybe even with steam on the point of the coal train. What is your offer?
gabe wrote: jeaton wrote: However, I'd offer this analogy. If you were to find a very valuble painting in the attic of your house and received mega-bucks for the painting at auction, what would you do with the funds? Cash in a coffee can buried in the back yard, where it might get eaten by grubs? Or, cash invested in businesses with good prospects for profits and growth? Jay I would buy a picture of IC E-units overtaking a IC coal drag just outside of Ramsey, Illinois . . . get a real return on my investment. Gabe
jeaton wrote: However, I'd offer this analogy. If you were to find a very valuble painting in the attic of your house and received mega-bucks for the painting at auction, what would you do with the funds? Cash in a coffee can buried in the back yard, where it might get eaten by grubs? Or, cash invested in businesses with good prospects for profits and growth? Jay
However, I'd offer this analogy. If you were to find a very valuble painting in the attic of your house and received mega-bucks for the painting at auction, what would you do with the funds? Cash in a coffee can buried in the back yard, where it might get eaten by grubs? Or, cash invested in businesses with good prospects for profits and growth?
Jay
I would buy a picture of IC E-units overtaking a IC coal drag just outside of Ramsey, Illinois . . . get a real return on my investment.
There could well be such a picture, maybe even with steam on the point of the coal train. What is your offer?
I would spot you your E-units and coal drag and spot you a Carol Cloar painting of the diamone at Moorhead, Mississippi; maybe, also a little W.C. Handy tune by the same name " Where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog." [ Google that and you'll find another aspect of the history ofd the IC in the Mississippi River Delta.]
Or, how about the Railway Ic Co , ice docks at Fulton, Kentucky, re-icing the banana trains off the Gulf Coast. It was because of those operations that people in the upoper Midwest had fresh bananas in their stores, and for their corn flakes.
Or the Locomotive Shops at Paducah, Kentucky, source of the IC's steam power for fast freights,and faster passenger trains; still a source for the diesel era, as it has morphed into VMV's rebuilding and modification facility.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
nanaimo73 wrote: gabe wrote: However, you probably have one good point, as passenger service was likely discontinued long before E-units. You're right, Gabe. Service on the north end between Freeport and Clinton with locals 129 and 130 ended on April 3, 1939. From Clinton southward would have been before that. Two weeks earlier, on March 16, 1939, passenger service ended on the PD&E, Peoria-Mattoon-Olney-Evansville.
gabe wrote: However, you probably have one good point, as passenger service was likely discontinued long before E-units.
However, you probably have one good point, as passenger service was likely discontinued long before E-units.
You're right, Gabe. Service on the north end between Freeport and Clinton with locals 129 and 130 ended on April 3, 1939. From Clinton southward would have been before that.
Two weeks earlier, on March 16, 1939, passenger service ended on the PD&E, Peoria-Mattoon-Olney-Evansville.
Your wealth of rail knowledge never ceases to amaze me Naniamo. By the way, what is the deal with the picture of the Union Jack and Sun? Just curious.
Quite sure. Art is about uniqueness. The Nickle Platte Clover Leaf and the IC original line went through Ramsey. There was a siding just outside of Ramsey on the IC line, so meets were possible.
Good catch. I chose Ramsey because of the Tower Thread. There is an awesome tower even though both train lines are no longer there. The tower guarding the now-go interlocking is still there and owned by the Lions club.
Ramsey has a mystique quality to me, it is what we lost.
I will give you double the amount of money that open-access would make the rail industry in the next two years . . ..
My recollections are pretty strong of the IC... I loved that railroad. It really was my first exposure to trains as a hobby. Back in the mid 70's, growing up in Hillside, IL, we had a single track ICG main that ran through town. My brother (he was the train buff, along with my dad) used to refer to it as the "Freeport Sub" or something like that.
Starting in the summer after 5th grade, my friend and I used to go up to the tracks, a short 3 block walk from his house, and watch trains. Every night in the summer, we would run down toward the expressway, cut through a yard, out to Taft Ave, and up the embankment to the railroad bridge over Butterfield road to catch the Amtrak. It was almost like it was a race to see if we could get to the tracks, before the Amtrak came flying through. Later, during the summer after 6th grade, we built a "clubhouse" along the line, in a lot that a local paving company used for dumping their torn up asphalt and concrete. We were astride the siding into the old S&H Green Stamps warehouse (now a Fed-Ex facility) and each night, right after the Amtrak, was the local that worked the line, bringing back his string of empties, sometimes, we would get to the tracks to watch the local switch out the S&H Warehouse. It was quite a sight. The train crew was pretty friendly, and would always wave to us and shout greetings as they did their work. One time, one of the crew members let us help him throw the switch. . We spent the summers up until eighth grade graduation hanging around the tracks. we got to know the schedule pretty good, too, we could pretty much anticipate when trains would be coming. It was, if I remember, fairly busy, we could see 3 or 4 trains on a good afternoon. Lots of grain traffic through their, along with a few manifest freights. It was a constant stream of orange and white, sometimes the odd GM&O unit would be lashed up with a bunch of Paducah rebuilds. Late in the summer of 1980, the paving company converted that lot to a storage yard, and alas, it was the last of our clubhouse. But, by that time, my friend had moved to another state, and I rarely went to the tracks at that time. But, I will always carry memories of those summers. They were the best. The Chicago Central bought the line in the late 80's and I think ran it until about 1999 when CN bought it, and improved it. Also, I remember a couple of derailments in the early 80's while I was in high school. The line is still active through there, the CN sends about 6 or 8 freight trains through a day. It's incredible, on a line that was dominated by GP20 rebuilds, you see SD70's and Dash 9's... back then, the trains trundled along at 20-25 miles an hour... now, they fly through there at 50mph plus. It's unreal. My favorite part, was the fact that you had a clear sight line east all the way to North Riverside, and you could see the headlight from a train, as soon as it was clear of Cicero and Berwyn. It was awesome. I will never forget those times, and my introduction to trains. More than that, it was the carefree summer days of youth, spent pursuing nothing.... What a time that was..
MP173 wrote:Greyhound:How profitable were the IC piggyback trains that ran south out of Chicago? I know they ran trains to New Orleans, and I believe to Memphis.I think these were trains 50 - 53. You mentioned earlier that the trains would stop at Mattoon for pickups/setouts. My June 1974 Official Guide shows 51 leaving Chicago at 530pm and arriving in Memphis at 830am the following morning. That is hustling. Northbound 50 would leave Memphis at 615pm with a 9am arrival in Chicago. That is 525 miles overnight.I would have thought that would have been extremely competitive with trucking. How was the service? Was it reliable or had the mainline begun to have problems? Who were the major shippers or products shipped? UPS?Does anyone know what CN is doing now with this service?What really surprizes me is that CN has not aggressively pursued Detroit - Memphis type of intermodal. Living on the CN main (GTW) here in Indiana, they only run 1 intermodal each way and that is Halifax - Chicago. Nothing that turns south. Wonder why?ed
About 1998, in Memphis,Tn. M.S.Carriers, a large local truckload carrier tried to establish a piggy back operation utilizing their trailers, and a new trailer loading ramp at IC's Johnson Yard. Trailers would be shipped overnight to NOLA and Chicago. Operationally, the local drayage fees sucked all the profit out of the moves to those treminal locations; further exacerbating what started out as a good idea, was the damage done to the truck trailers at the terminal in New Orleans, and more specifically the Chicago railhead. Several trailers were "droppped" by the large forklifts used to load/unload the trailers from the rail cars, destroying the trailer and the cargo. Several drivers reported verbal exchanges with the yard's unloading crews referencing the lack of union employees working for the non-union truckline. The whole deal was dropped after ther initial trial period. Although, there were a number of moves successfully done over BNSF from Memphis to the Left Coast at a later date.
ed
Actually, pretty favorable.
I worked as suburban trainman and briefly in the freight traffic department from the spring of 1959 until late '61, so I had a view of the IC in the days before Johnson. At best, stodgy comes to mind. At worst, the railroad was just reacting to the changing conditions of the time, doing the best it could with the limited resources left after paying the bills.
When I got the job in the marketing department in1969, Johnson was making his mark. He brought in a lot of very bright people, and directed then to be proactive in the effort to tackle the problems faced by the rail industry. Among many others, Dave Gunn, Paul Reistrup, Alan Boyd and John Ingram were among the management team.
He got out the paint, not just for cars and locomotives, but also for a lot of the fixed property. Some will argue that it was just window dressing, but it is pretty well established that a fresh coat of paint can do much for employee morale and company image.
Johnson also pushed through the quasi governmental agency that could get t.he Federal funds for the new cars for the IC Electric suburban service. (For those who miss the old cars, put on a suit and tie and sit for an hour on an uncomfortable bench outside on a windy, hot, dusty day. Then go directly to work in your office for 8-9 hours.)
You probably know that the where with all for the diversification came from the sale of the Chicago lakefront air rights. Many argued the those funds should have been reinvested in the railroad, but if you consider fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, I think the course of action was correct. At the time the railroad was falling far short of anything close to a reasonable rate of return. In fact, at the highest levels of railroad management, there was concern that the railroads might all go bankrupt, be liquidated or be taken over by the government. By putting the valuble air rights in a separate subsidiary, the prospect of these being taken up or lost to the government or creditors was substantially diminished.
The railroad was left to make due with the resources it could generate on its own, in other words it functioned financially as if it were a stand alone business. At the time, some people I spoke with wondered if Industries was taking more than a reasonable amount out of the railroad. I wasn't then and am not now enouugh of a expert in corporate finances to offer an opinion on that question.
I can add a little to Greyhounds comments. From the very beginning of the IC's dedicated intermodal trains, equipment utilization was the name of the game. When I came on the IC in 1969, all the managers of the Intermodal Marketing group stressed that point.
I don't have the exact details on the startup of the Chicago-Memphis train, but it first rolled out in the late 60's. The IM Department had done their homework. They determined that the business potential was there and knew the cost of the operation and the number of loads needed to hit the breakeven point. It was a major change in the way the IC did business and getting it started required the total support of then IC President Bill Johnson and his ability to get the Operating Department to sign on to the program.
Initially the train was powered by excess passenger E-units, and as I recall, the first train only had a couple of loads. It took months to hit the breakeven point and during that period, Johnson would call IM Sales Manager Bud Logan every morning to get an update on the number of loads. Although ever so slow, the business was growing and fortunately Johnson stayed with it and didn't pull the plug.
When I left the IC in 1975, the dedicated TOFC service extended to New Orleans and that is about the time Greyhounds started there so the next phase is his story.
MP173 wrote:Did you contract the drayage out with local companies or handle it thru company drivers? My guess is you used draymen. I recall being at Effingham and watching the freight trains. There was a New Orleans freight, Birmingham, Paducah, plus the grain trains and coal trains for Wisconsin Electric and Inland Steel. But with all those impressive trains you would then have a local with 3 cars running from Effingham to Mattoon and back.I got my pictures out last night and reviewed the memories. I have pictures of the crew receiving a box of lunch handed up from the operator. That was quite a perk.How many sling shots did they run daily to St. Louis? Was it three each way? Was the routing thru Gilman, Clinton and then down the GMO?I heard at one time they ran hot auto parts trains all the way down the IC to Duquoin and then backdoored into EStL. Dont think there is much on the Clinton line these days. ed
Mostly Owner Operators. They loved us. We paid well, and running off the rail ramp they got to go home to their GF/wife at night. We had some few company drivers. They worked for a seperate subsidiary corporation. In those days Teamsters and railroads didn't mix.
One of our company drivers got "fired" one day, and apologized to the next. The head honcho. one Harry Burce, was in the back of a limo going down the Dan Ryan. Behind him in traffic was and ICG tractor pulling a load. He called in and wanted to know where the load was going. He said something like "I've got this ICG driver on my ***, where is he going?". Innocent enough. He just wanted to know where the load he saw was going.
But it was interprited as if the driver was tailgating. That got the driver fired for a day. The next day they called him in and apologized. That must have been a long night for the driver. I've had to go home and tell my wife that I was fired. But in my case it was for real. We had our share of idiots in management. There was no excuse for doing that to a man who was simply doing his job.
The "Slingshots" were three short, fast, freqent intermodal trains per day between Chicago and St. Louis. I think they proved that the "sort, fast, fequent" thing sucks. Initally, they were spaced 8 hours apart - going with the now disproven theory that freight becomes available throughout the day. It doesn't.
Shippers wanted to load in the afternoon and have the load delivered the next morning. We wound up bunching the trains to run overnight as much as we could while keeping the crews rested. The train's had "short" crews for then, two people, and ran with no caboose. Gasp!.But we were limited to 15 cars by union agreement. This meant we kept leaving trailers behind. Which I got to explain to the shipper the next morning. "Well, you see, we chose your load to sit and, no, I don't know why".
They ran the old GM&O/C&A route all the way. Through Dwight, Bloomington and Springfield. The UTU represented the engineers on this route and there was no inter union squable over who didn't have the job on the train. That's why we got the two person crews.
daveklepper wrote: .1. Yes a Rabbi must be present and will insure that no pork product is present and that no milk product is present for use with meat products and visa versa and minimum standards of cleanliness are met or exceeded. 2. To be Kosher food must meet certain quality standards as well as standards for slaughtering (for meet), no pork or shellfish product, and not mixing meat and milk, containers and implements as well as the food itself.
.1. Yes a Rabbi must be present and will insure that no pork product is present and that no milk product is present for use with meat products and visa versa and minimum standards of cleanliness are met or exceeded.
2. To be Kosher food must meet certain quality standards as well as standards for slaughtering (for meet), no pork or shellfish product, and not mixing meat and milk, containers and implements as well as the food itself.
A number of years ago, an elderly rabbi, was inspecting a trailer that was transporting edible in gredients to Meade Jonnson baby formula plant, in I think Evansville, IN. Their products are all Kosher[ carry the (C) for parve on the label]. He told me that the inspection was for the cleanliness of the tank, to prevent any cross contamination of the contents, as Dave mentions. There is no specific religious prayer or incantation, only the inspection process he outlined above to preserve kosher.
ICG Intermodal was treated as a seperate "business unit" and we had our own profit and loss statement. We showed a profit, but we really had to work to do it. Shoot, for us, the 500 mile run from Chicago to Memphis was "long haul" business.
Two things were consistantly beat into our heads:
1) equipment utilization - keep it moving and keep it loaded. A trailer on the ICG moved a revenue load every five days. That is fantastic utilization for railroad equipment. The days per load figure was kept chalked on a blackboard. If it went up, people got yelled at. Five days per load meant our trailer ownership cost was only about $35/load.
2) don't move the trailers empty, move 'em under revenue load. If you take a trailer from Chicago to Memphis under load, then bring it back empty, you'll pay for four lifts, 1,000 miles of transport, and all the trailer/flatcar costs with that one load. If you bring it back under revenue load you'll spread those same costs over two loads. That makes a huge difference in profitability..
Degregulation made it a lot better. For years, under regulation, we charged the same price to move a load from Chicago to Memphis that we did to move it from Memphis to Chicago. That didn't work so well. The demand for freight transportation was far greater from Chicago than it was to Chicago. But our supply was the same. We had to move as much equipment into Chicago as we moved out of Chicago. So we moved a lot of empties back north. Regulation created an artificial imbalance between supply and demand.
The truckers didn't have this problem, they were able to charge market rates.
With dereg we dropped the northbound rates to the market level and filled our equipment with revenue freight. It did wonders for the bottom line.
And with deregulation we could get away from the "two trailer" rates. The ICC had a costing formula that sucked (it lives on today in the form of the "Uniform Rail Costing System"). Their costing formula produced a "cost" per carload, not a "cost" per trailerload. They wouldn't let us sell below their silly calculated "cost", so we had to sell two trailers at a time. Now some few shippers could do two at a time, but most couldn't. So we had to sell to a "Shippers Agent" who combined two loads on paper, billed 'em out as a "carload" and made the ICC happy.
With dereg, we could go directly to the shipper, negotiate the deal, and get the freight on the railroad.
Leaving the "two trailer rates" behind we could flex the pricing. Two trailer rates are, by necessity, ramp to ramp rates. The two trailers only came together as a "shipment" at the origin ramp. And they ceased being a "shipment" at the destination ramp. So the rates were ramp to ramp.
Now a ramp to ramp rate is always wrong. It underprices some traffic, and it overprices other traffic. It is never right. This isn't so much of a problem on the 2,000 mile freight carried by the BNSF, but on our little railroad, it was critical.
Once we could get away from ramp to ramp pricing we were on our way. We went door to door instead of ramp to ramp. We'd pick up the load at the shipper's freight dock and deliver it to the receiver's dock. We could, again, "flex" the rates to maximize our income.
But we couldn't carry the entire railroad. It deteriorated and so did our service. On Time became problematical. Service never was a complete disaster. But it sure wasn't stellar. If a shipper gave us a load Monday evening in Chicago, we'd deliver it Tuesday in Memphis. Sometimes not very early on Tuesday - but on Tuesday.
MP173 wrote:Dave:I believe at the Chicago Skyway overpass there are either 5 or 6 tracks. Four for suburbans and one for freight...perhaps a siding.Regarding the Kosher issue. I sell graphics including to the rail industry. Recently I had a request for "KOSHER" readings to go on a tank car. Do you know if the Rabbi must do something to inspect the railcar? Or is it just a designation that the food is Kosher? If it does move Kosher food, are there restrictions for hauling non Kosher foods? If so, what would have to occur to be recertified? ed
I have a friend who owns a soap company. He has to have it Kosher inspected, which includes some type of blessing.
As an aside, if you are ever traveling and there are in-transit meals. Always order Kosher food. For some reason, it is almost always better quality food than the other meals.
I'd be interested if the meat from that |Kosher slaughterhouse still moves by rail, trailer on flatcar or whatever. To bad the whole issue of Kosher on trains was not included in the excellent Dinner in the Diner issue of TRAINS, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Amtrak was willing to reserve Kosher meals when making reservations for diner equipped long distance trains and aslo for first class Metroliner passengers. One could even order Kosher-fish or kosher-vegetarian only if one wanted to do so.
But before my Kosher days, I really did enjoy that approximately $10 Kings Dinner in the Panama Limited dining car, and the IC really did provide good passenger service on whatever trains it still ran right up to Amtrak. In the 60's the main line was one of the smoothest riding of any railroad anywhere and all equipment was kept in top notch shape. Earlier, in the 50's, I remember steam on fast freight trains, even when the non-commuter passsenger service was totally dieselized. And I do remember the creosoted wooden commuter station platforms. And the IC green commuter cars were the only USA equipment to have both diaphrams for walking between cars and pantograph gates (those things in the front corners) to prevent people from falling off high platforms between cars. Even the FRA says it isn't necessary to have both, just one or the other.
Some of IC first-generation mu cars were older than 1926. A bunch came on line in 1924 as steel passenger coaches for use behind the steam "Forney" engines as trail coach and then were equipped for electric operation. All were the same design. however.
The IC suburban service is 150 years old this month (I think.) It was the very first suburban railroad service operated on a long distance carrier. (The New York and Harlem and the Long Island and its constituants started as suburban or even as semi-rapid transit operations.) The IC responded to requests and started a Hyde Park - Chicago workers' train in 1856!
My nosgtalgia for the green IC cars does not, however, allow me to forget the even greater "character" of the "real" PRR MP-54's (not the same as the quieter dc-current tame LIRR version) with that 50 Hz growl as the train accelerated because of the 25Hz ac current - and the owl-face fronts with the circular windows, shared by some of the Pacific Electric mu's (which I never did see first-hand except in the museum). The IC cars were relatively quiet and normal looking. The old Lackawanna mu's out of Hoboken, NJ were very similar but built with traps for low platforms (the IC green cars had traps for one vestibule of the four in a two-car pair, for emergency use) and without either diaphragms or pantograph gates. Interesting that the Lackawanna cars were replaced with stainless steel single-level "Jersey Arrows" somewhat similar to the South Shore new cars, but the IC's by gallery mu cars, the first of that type anywhere. The use of the tracks by the orange-and-maroon CSS&SB trains provided variety in the old days, plus the procession of freight and passsenger trains on the "steam raiolroad" tracks. How many tracks are there today? At one time there were a total of ten north of Hyde Park, I believe. Six for suburban, two for freight and two for long-distance passenger, up to Central Station.
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