If the Tennessee Pass line is ever reactivated (highly doubtful), traffic would be routed via the Joint Line to Denver and then east on the Kansas Pacific line. When UP rebuilt the KP, they made it abundantly clear that it was to allow the abandonment of the ex-MP line to Pueblo. Also, the KP routing was much more direct for Colorado coal that was moving east off the Moffat Tunnel line at the time of the UP/SP merger.
Unlike UP’s other directional running territories, there was never enough traffic moving east-west across Kansas to ever justify such an arrangement, even in the early 2000’s. Current traffic levels on the KP are ~5-7 MGT.
I used to board Amtrak regularly at the former GM&O station in Springfield, Illinois to reach Chicago. Loved that Michelangelo like painting on the ceiling of the station of the GM&O network with angels holding up the clouds around it.
As for the Alton route being a UP “contingency” route, they have 3 routes to Chicago today…the Alton route to Joliet (Global IV), the C&EI route to Dolton, the CNW route via Nelson to reach Global III & Proviso.
UP also brings coal up on the Alton from the Monterrey and Crown Mines.
So I wouldn’t call it a contingency much anymore.
As for maintain it, as noted by an earlier poster, Illinois has dumped millions upon millions to upgrade the line for HSR. They are dumping more to relocate the Alton line from downtown Springfield to align it with the NS.
The short lived CMNW then became the Gateway Western in 1990 that become the unofficial St.Louis entry for Santa Fe. I was working for Cargill at that time and our bulk flour shipping eastward listed as an all Santa Fe single freight bill Newton-St.Louis. Don’t have details and not sure if this was in the CMNW or GWWR years, does anyone have knowledge of a deadly accident east of Kansas City where a train ran into an open siding switch at night, colliding with another train resulting in atleast two deaths, if not more?
That would have been the Gateway Western. If the Santa Fe had made the same traffic arrangement and track investments in the CM&W, it probably wouldn’t have went belly up.
UP railbanking the Tennessee Pass line was a savvy political move to shut certain interests up, while they moved all of SP’s Midwest-Bay Area overhead traffic over to the Overland Route. No one at the time ever thought that there would ever be an actual necessity to to reopen Tennessee Pass.
I have worked w/a few GW workers, but none that go back to the brief CMNW days of the late 80s. One of them told me computer systems many times confused the marks of CMNW and CNW which created billing drama. Several yrs ago, it was relayed to me a former ICG/CMNW/GW and KCS fellow was attemtping to do a book project centered mainly on GW history that would have included coverage of the two carriers prior to GW being created. I have not heard anything further on this but do hope somethig can be put together. This is a rail corridor w/an interesting past and a story that is worth being told.
As I recall, SP could have acquired the entire CMW, but didn’t want the Kansas City line. I no longer have a copy (or, more likely, can’t find the copy I used to have) but there was a verified statement by Michael Ongerth filed with STB on behalf of UP in the CN-IC merger proceeding discussing the CMW-SP transaction and its aftermath in considerable detail. Mr. Ongerth was a senior SP official involved in the CMW transaction.
Perhaps someone more computer savy than me can find and circulate this statement. It just might still be available on the STB website as part of a UP filing in the CN-IC merger proceeding.
STB digital archives start in 1996 and come forward. (and the early stuff is not that great…scanned images were not in favor at the time and it took a while to get rid of the micro-film/microfiche mafia luddites… even worse was STB’s steadfast refusal to scan in color.)
The STB library for film copies or RG-134 at National Archives would be needed to recover that data.
Regarding the Kansas City traffic levels, I believe there were four turns on the pool boards there upon the CMNW folding away in early 1990. If I am in error of this and any additional info can be shared, let me know
They sold off the MoP because they had two lines from the front range that met at Salina KS (ironically, since the coal slump, the KP is also on the market)
Fortunately, the MoP was saved by the surveyors that caught A&K in a huge lie that stalled A&K’s abandonment effort long enough for the Soloviev’s to step in and buy the line to support their Ag business.
Anyone from ethically challenged A&K setting foot in Colorado ought to be thrown in jail mui-pronto. The MoP line is far from the only case of malfeasance that they have been involved in - in Colorado… but also in other states as well.
One other thing about the directional traffic north of KC. On the exRI route UP is at the mercy of CPKC between Polo Missouri and KC. While that joint track is CTC two main track, it seems to still be a bottleneck.
.What traffic came out of there was mostly moving on the ex-NKP Line … The P&E Line saw little investment from CR and later N&W/NS (more business on the other two sides of the triangle betweem Bloomington, Gibson City and Mansfield.
Today’s newspaper item on the car-b-que outside the Rivian plant says the plant started -up as Diamond Star [Mitsubishi/Chrysler joint venture] in 1988 and then Chrysler dropped out in 1993.
They used The Pequot Sub. (beginning from Joliet, IL to the Mazonia, IL area via Coal City, IL, instead of Wilmington, IL) with occasional trains (just like the Illinois Central Gulf had). I remember seeing their engines. They certainly didn’t last long and I don’t remember the trains being as frequent as when the ICG would take that Pequot Sub. route. Amtrak would also route their trains this way on occasion (whenever the Joliet Sub.-the old main ICG route via Wilmington, IL was tied up, for whatever reason). This was a unique area in that you had a main route via Wilmington and a parallel route via Coal City that went for a while before rejoining at Mazonia, IL.