In over 55 years of train watching in Illinois I have never seen mid train power here. Until tonight.
CN came south through town about 8:15 PM with what looked to be just another freight train with two locos up front. I watched it go by hauling more lumber than I though anyone would need these days, no big deal. Until the mid train power went by.
It looked like a solid block of tank cars with molten sulphur followed the mid train power.
Surely, they don’t need helpers here all of a sudden. Was this train going to be split with the rear part going down the old “J” route? Or to some other destination. That’s the only thing I can think of.
CN has been testing distributed power in trains as of late, partially as a way to maintain train air in the cold we had this winter, and partially to run longer trains.
Would not be surprised if this train needed a shove up Byron Hill, with all the weight.
One of the grandsons lives in Mattoon IL, and he’s seen a few long CN trains go thru with pushers on the end. The wife even seen one there, of course I wasn’t with her at the time.
I suspect what you saw was Distributed Power with a twist. From your discription it sounds like you saw two trains combined with the power from the 2nd train being used as Distributed power. Sounds like the head train was a General Merchandise train and the the trailing train was probably a unit Sulphur Train. Being able to utilize Distributed Power in such a case eliminates an additional crew start.