Somewhat related to what Leo and Tom are discussing, I am
attaching 2 Excel spreadsheets.
One is a sample of eastbound traffic from GN trains 82 and 88
interchanged with the Q to the Chicago Gateway in 1968. These are
posted on the GNHS site. I've tried to assign the proper name to
the consignee, but decoding the old 8 letter compressed consignee
name does not come up with obvious answers.
The second is a coal extra from Galesburg to Cicero on Christmas
Eve 1965 pulled by 6 first generation diesels. All southern
Illinois coal bound for Inland Steel. I have always liked the
variety of coal hoppers in this wheel report. This is from a wheel
report that Russ Strodtz posted in the old Yahoo Rail Freight
Group about 15 years ago.
Tom,
Sit back and get comfy as you got me going……………..
As i reported earlier i do not recall any
discussions of ore trains going around the horn in Q days from
my coworkers. Again as i added that didn’t mean it never
happened,i just dont recall ever hearing about it. Now i will
expand on some other aspects about the lines and their business
carried. As can be understood reading Earls article he had
access to far more information than a little brakeman/Conductor.
More on that later.
The westbound empty boxcar trains around the horn
were called extra norths.
Note that Earl didn’t discuss coal trains in Q days
and that would be because there weren’t any eastbound into
Savanna. The closest thing to unit coal trains were the
eastbound coal drags coming up from the Southern IL coal fields
into Galesburg and then onto Chicago. The Q did have a large
amount of coal business towards the north but that would have
gone on the pea vine.
I do not have any BN ETTs and Earl states the speed
limit on the Denrock-Mendota line was 40MPH. I recall 30 MPH as
a constant. Also keep in mind the decision to send an
Eastbound train “around the horn” instead of on the
C&I would have been made by the Chief Dispatcher not the
trick or line dispatcher as the chief has a better feel for the
overall picture on numerous lines. Same with how many and which
way to deadhead crews.
Earls discussion of the “moonlight Job” from
Mendota to Barstow is correct except i understand that the job
didn’t exist after the BN merger or very shortly after it.I am
working on a BRHS article on the “Moonlight Job” which will
discuss its history from the 1890s up until merger and go
through how the run was changed over the decades.
At different times it operated through to Rock
island.It will be a case study of how the Q fought for the farm
equipment business against the Rock,Milw and CNW and then later
the trucks. It was the trucks that killed the moonlight job and
farm equipment by rail. Eventually that job was repalced(to some
extent) by another local that ill explain further along.
Now let’s move on to early decades of the BN. In my
BN years of ‘73-‘80 i never saw,worked or heard of a unit coal
train going around the horn. Could it have happened in a tough
situation,sure. But let me assure you the traffic being handled
Denrock-Mendota was literally tearing the RR apart. I spent 3
days on a rail pick up work train on the branch sometime in the
mid ‘70s. We started out each day with a long string of empty
gons and stopped every few hundred feet to pick up broken rails
that were laying in the weeds.
We picked up hundreds and hundreds of broken rails.
The roadmaster was riding in a gon with his notebook listing
where he noted rails to pick up. We had a burro crane riding a
gon to grab the rails. But sitting in the cab of the loco we
could spot rails consistently that weren’t in his book. They
were everywhere. Remember this was the second hand relay rail
from a mainline project that had gone through the rail shop and
been shortened to 33 feet lengths. The occasional potash trains
and those,what seemed to be one or two a day underpowered drags
that went around the horn were destroying the line. There was
“Jonnie Schmidt’s” potash pile from a prior unit train
derailment where dead vegetation and pink potash marked the spot
for years.
Now let’s discuss the potash trains. Again i can
only discuss based on what I’ve seen. My first experience with a
potash trains was 1968 or ‘69 when i was the unofficial
“machinist helper” at Eola roundhouse on Sunday’s . One day “Big
John” says to me go down to Ohio St on your home and take a look
at the GP-7 derailed at the end of the track. Somewhere in my
photo collection i have pictures of a jeep 7 jackknifed between
a half loaded scrap gon at Gordon scrap on the industrial lead
and potash covered hoppers. Seems in those days the potash
trains went to Eola not Mendota and were switched around in the
east yard. Also about this time management was refusing to pay
“air pay” to the switch crews except in certain circumstances.
So as i understand the explanation i heard was that when the
east yard switch foreman was given a list of potash cars to dig
out he coupled into the string but didn’t put air into the
potash cars. Now any one familiar with the east yard at Eola
knows that once you got just a little west of the switchmans
overhead signal shanty it was a steep down ward grade out to Mc
Clure road and beyond. “Velvet” was the engineer on the jeep and
he followed the “educated hand”signals he received and backed up
westward until he received a stop signal from the signal above
the switchmans signal shanty. It was then he quickly learned
that the engine brakes were not going to stop that string of 100
ton potash loads. He road her out until movement stopped when
banged against the gon at Gordon’s scrap.
Now, i cant say if it was that incident or
something else that caused the switching and distribution of the
unit potash trains to be moved to Mendota in the north yard
there.
What i also cant say is did some potash trains move
over the C&I when they were destined to Eola? I just dont
know.
Now back to the discussion of the decision to rip
out the Denrock-Mendota line that Earl covered so well. Here’s a
different perspective from my personal experience.
My very first run as a Conductor was on #11643 that
operated Eola-Savanna via Mendota and Denrock one day and back
from Savanna-Eola the next via the C&I.
There were two turns on those jobs so the branch
had service 6 days a week. The day i was called as an
“emergency” conductor for the job the entire crew had “laid
off”.
When i learned all 4 us were extra i thought why
would the entire crew layoff ? Well i found out at Mendota when
we were told to pick up 25 cars to be distributed
All along the branch to industries, fertilizer
plants,,etc,etc. Next morning at Savanna it was the same thing
25 cars to handle on the C&I. So much for the business
drying up.
Well at least the local stuff. Why 25 cars both
days. The division management had instructions to the yards that
25 cars were the limit on these runs.
But soon one turn was abolished then the second and
local service on the branch and C&I was a to be handled by
crews called at Savanna eastbound on an as needed basis.
These crews would most likely have deadheaded home
so at the time i thought this was smart business and being more
efficient.
Needless to say the pool crews,used to riding the
run through trains were non too happy. But as needed quickly
seemed to become once in a great while and cars would pile up in
Savanna. Sometimes a through train going around the horn would
be given a couple cars to spot somewhere when the customer had
finally gotten someone’s attention.
Then i went to work in the regional office building
and while discussing this pattern with my boss and showing him
the number of cars piling up. His comment was “that’s because
they want to abandon” the line. Then i understood.
Leo
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