Rick,
Ford had a very tight relationship with the Wabash. And the Wabash served their southeast Michigan plants. So this traffic was routed Wabash from Michigan to St. Louis.
Trains or Classic Trains magazine had a article a few years ago that the Rock Island at one time had the leg from Chicago to Denver on the Ford Fast (I think in the 1970s), but lost it due to inconsistent delivery
times as their track deteriorated. I think the article said the Michigan-Chicago leg was via GTW.
Hopefully Fred Crissey will reply here. Here is a reply Fred sent me a few years ago about auto traffic via St. Louis:
"Question 4 on St. Louis. The Q did not handle any assembly parts from the east. There was a small move of auto glass from Libby-Owens-Ford (LOF) at Ottawa, IL to GM at St. Louis. These moved in 50ft cars which
were replaced by 60ft cars in about 1968. The routing was CB&Q-TRRA although there was a few cars that moved CBQ-Peoria-IT. LOF was a big vendor of glass for GM. I this is what I will call "vendor" traffic. There was another vendor move of dashboard panels
from Sheller Globe at Keokuk to all of the "Big 3". Some of this did move to Ford, GM, and Chrysler St. Louis area plants for a while. This moved started in about 1968. They moved in 50ft box cars. The routing would be via Q-TRRA although the Robertson
Ford cars could have been delivered direct to the Wabash/N&W at North St. Louis. These moves were for assembly plants. "
Bill Hirt
On 8/3/2020 7:21 AM, Rick Keil wrote:
All,
Tangent just released a beautiful model of the 86' Greenville boxcar. While not in Q colors yet, I suspect David is already researching his next release.
The history of the cars show they were in pool service which makes sense, my question is around the movement of autoparts. One of the routes was the Ford FAST over the DRGW and it appears the routing flipped between the UP and the MP/DRGW. Would the Q have
handled any of these cars on Lines West? Would they have been on the Chicago-Grand Island trains to be handed off to the UP?
The question is not limited to the big 86' cars but for any autoparts cars like the 60' XM-6As
Thanks
Ricky Keil