Leo,
Do you know when they started shipping Datsuns to this facility? Was it pre- or post-BN?
My wheel reports show a lot of westbound auto rack traffic must have gone over the C&I (based on the large number of empty F3 tri-level autoracks interchanging to the Q in Mpls/StP headed for MI and OH), but I don't show and loaded racks going east. Would be nice (albeit expensive!) to have one of the new HO scale Genesis tri-level loaded with Datsuns headed east on one of my C&I trains.
Tom Mack
Cincinnati, OH
---In
CBQ@yahoogroups.com, <qutlx1@...> wrote :
The auto distribution facility was for Datsun(now Known as Nissan). The cars came in from the west coast through St Paul and the C&I trains. Cars were set out Eola and then the Nabisco job would spot them. The di
stribution center was the largest customer in the Naperville Industrial park developed by the Q. The empties were picked up at Eola and they were has "hot" as the loads.
These auto loads were very high priority. One day for some reason(unknown to me) an eastbounder brought his Datsun loads to Cicero. My pool turn was ordered to operate an extra from Cicero to Nabisco with the 18 or so loads. We pulled into the tracks parallel to the main,ran around the train,grabbed the Waycar and went back to Cicero and tied up. Total time on duty less than two hours.
The long siding parallel to the main at Nabisco was used to temporarily hold cars destined to Congress Park interchange with the IHB.
Nabisco was the first industry in the park in the late 60s. It received bulk raw products and shipped retail cereal,etc.
Today there's two industries left that are served by rail, a plastics plant facing rt
e 59 and an auto,parts distribution warehouse. Even the relatively new Weyerhaeuser operation has closed. All those car dealerships along Aurora Ave are located on the site of the Datsun facility. I think every brand of car made can be purchased along that strip of road
Or rte. 34.
Leo Phillipp
That used to be an autorack unloading facility for all the car dealerships in the area. I don't know when it opened, but it closed in the early 2000's and the tracks were removed. They also ran refrigerated roadrailer trains out of there for a brief period in the late 1990
's or early 2000's. They closed the auto ramp after the huge Logistics Park Chicago intermodal/automobile facility was completed in Elwood on the former Santa Fe mainline.
Joe LeMay