Bill,
While I have no opinion on the "Railroad Days" issue I think you
are mistaken in your assessment of Galesburg's role in BNSF
operations.
I would say Galesburg must have at least twice the daily car counts
today than it did in the early 90's. All classification of traffic for
connections East of Galesburg is done at Galesburg. Right now there
is no regular "H" or "M" train East of Savanna. Northtown does not
block any Chicago traffic, everything goes to Galesburg. While the
trains on the AT&SF are blocked to some extent I don't know of any
that are not brought in to have the blocks filled out.
In an interesting note on that theme, within the last six months policy
has been changed so that all Galesburg traffic from Casper, Bonneville,
and Greybull goes to Laurel. MRL makes up a daily M-LAUGAL
which usually bypasses Northtown. All that comes East from that area
is Lincoln, Kansas City, and Northtown traffic. This is to reduce
congestion at Lincoln. For a few months they were doing the blocking
on this train at McCook. I think this has been given up on but while it
was being done I saw many McCook to Kansas City trains in the ten to
fourteen thousand ton range. There was also block swapping done at
Oxford.
Getting back to Galesburg it has also picked up more Intermodal and
Vehicle traffic. Anything for NS at Landers, CSX at Barr Yard or IHB
at Blue Island has to go via Galesburg because that is the only direct
way to reach the IHB. When a Honda ship come in at Portland the
standard train run is a Portland to Blue Island which runs via Galesburg.
Once and a while they deliver Sealand traffic to Bedford Park by using
the IHB down to the West end of Clearing but that is not a regular movement.
The much advertised PNW to Columbus and vice versa train that was
supposed to run via Streator is also a rarity. If it does run it's usually a
bunch of empty boxes that NS must want off their Railroad. The "seamless"
Intermodal is not very seamless at all.
Russ
----- Original Message -----
From: "William Barber" <clipperw@EarthLink.net>
To: <BRHSlist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 01 July, 2003 22:16
Subject: [BRHSlist] Re:Galesburg Railroad Days
> Keep things in prospective. The original RR days was a one time
> appreciation day for BN employees only at the Galesburg RR yard. The
> townspeople, many of whom then worked for the RR, convinced the RR to
> make it an annual event and involve the public. That was a different RR
> and a different management with different priorities. In today's merged
> RR, Galesburg does not play as important role in the current RR's
> operation as it once did. Today's management is more santa Fe oriented
> and the Santa Fe never choose to b e significantly involved with
> Galesburg RR days. I am sure that they, like some of the sponsors that
> used to participate, have a difficult time determining what real value
> they got from being a part of the event.
>
> Bill Barber
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