Where are all the coil cars going that pass through northern arizona? Yesterday I saw a BNSF train , with three BNSF , one CSX , one CN engine going west pulling approximately 35 loaded coil cars. BNSF moves quite a bit of steel through northern arizona. Apparently the trucks don’t have all the business yet.
If the whole train was coils, it was the “steel train”. One version of this consists of cars that are collected around the lower Lake Michigan mills… USS Gary Works in particular. They are brought to the BNSF by EJ&E, then assembled into a train. This is the JOLPIT (Joliet, IL to Pittsburg, CA)… I believe there was one destination in Arizona at one time, but I think that closed. The other destination is POSCO in CA. The coils are put through another process there.
Dave
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Dave:
As a J guy you probably already know this, but the J delivers a daily train to NS at Van Loon. In fact as I am writing this NS 323 is getting their train. It varies in length from 15 cars up to ??? (70 is the most I have heard).
NS 323 runs from Ft Wayne daily to Van Loon to pickup and then goes back home in the afternoon.
BTW…30 degrees and snowing in NW Indiana. How is SOCAL?
ed
SOCAL is currently drying out,[:)]but more rain is expected later this week[:(!].
BNSF runs a steel slab train that hauls slabs of import steel from the L.A.harbor to what used to be the Kaiser steel mill in Fontana.Sometimes this train carries coil steel as well.
Kaiser closed in 1984(?). That is now California Steel Industries.
http://www.californiasteel.com/
Also, I have seen some unit steel trains that go to USS-POSCO form United States Steel’s Fairford Works (Alabama). I do not know if these steel exist.