I drove to Champaign, Il today and back. Southbound there were a couple of freights, including a grain train at Rantoul coming off of the branch to Fisher. The grain train was west of I57 and I was able to exit and take a few photos of the movement. The train was truly a land barge, moving around 5mph. The track wasnt in great condition, but I have seen worse.
On the return, I passed a northbound around Gilman, then encountered a southbound and northbound meet at south Kankakee.
Decades ago I had a pretty good understanding, when it was IC, of the line’s operations, but have lost touch with it. Besides Amtraks, what are the operations like on the line? Are trains moving to Kirk Yard yet? or originate at Markham?
How often do the grain trains out of Fisher run? This is the first I have seen.
The trains on that branch only run as far as Dewey, the tracks have been removed in Fisher. At Dewey is the large grain elevator run by the Fisher Farmer’s Grain & Coal company. They load cuts of about 50 grain hoppers at a time. They only have a run-around track at the grain elevator for 13 cars, so they have to make cuts, run around them and shove them west as they loaded, and then pull them back east, run around them and shove them back east toward Rantoul. Sort of a neat operation.
They run as market conditions and empty cars are available. They might load twice a week sometimes, and then again not operate for a couple of weeks. It is all based on the grain market.
That locomotive is pretty rare. It is one of only 16 GP28s built. It was originally IC 9437 and went to the Kyle Railway before coming back ‘home’ to former IC trackage. When it came back from the Kyle, it still wore its original coat of Illinois Central black paint–the FFG&C painted the loco in the solid orange scheme. It is kept inside a metal shed there at Dewey when not being used, so you have to get them loading to get a shot of the loco.
There were two big CN units, the leader was CN2599. I took several photos over by Caradco on the west side of I57 and then east of the interstate at the first road heading north. The locomotives would throttle up a notch then down in order to maintain the slow speed.
I checked my IC photos…didnt have the IC9437, but did have an IC 9441. Do you know what other numbers these locomotives were?