Norfolk Southern and Evansville Western are building a new 1.5 mile rail connection between the two railroads on the east side of Mount Vernon, Illinois. The line is primarily being built to allow EVWR to transfer coal from the Sugar Camp Mine at Akin to NS to deliver to various power plants. I took some pictures of the construction site and posted on rrpicturearchives.net. Here is a link to them: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/archivethumbs.aspx?id=61107
That is good news! Two of my favorite railroads making progress. I live about five miles from the west end of EVWR’s line.
I’m guessing that it’s about here - N 38.30657, W 88.87163, per the ACME Mapper 2.0 at - http://mapper.acme.com/ ? The EVWR is the former L&N line, and the NS line used to be the Southern ? It looks like the connection will be almost a half-circle with the open end towards the east, and crossing east-west E. Liberty Rd. (Perkins Ave.) / County Road 1250 N, which is where I’m also guessing your photos were taken from, and perhaps also N. Liebengood Lane/ County Road 1475 E ?
Your coordinates are correct. The new rail connection will not touch Liebengood Lane, although it’s very close to it. Yes, it will definitely cross County Road 1250 N (East Liberty Road). It’s almost impossible to access the spot where the new rail connection will connect to the EVWR main line. However, the location where the connection track will connect to the NS main line is very visible, as you saw in my pictures. I couldn’t get a good picture from the highway but the new interchange track appears to curve both directions (I’m 100% positive that there will be an eastern connection and only 50% positive that there will also be a western connection). I’m basing my judgment on how things will unfold with this new connection based on the rail connection that NS installed a little over 2 years ago to the mine over at Maud (I believe it’s called Friendville mine). There was nothing there, basically an empty corn field. They came in, moved the dirt, fixed the roadbed, laid some fine gravel as a base, installed the track, and laid the ballast. I may be wrong, but I think they completed it all within 2-3 months. It didn’t take them very long. They used sectional rail to lay that connection, which I assume they’ll also do for this connection. There’s really no point in laying welded rail. I didn’t watch them install the track at Maud, but I believe they brought the track in on rail cars in pre-assembled sections (sort of like snap track) and simply installed the rail joiners (angle bars). If they move fast enough, they might be able to get it done by or before the end of November. If they move slowly, they’ll be working into 2011. I have no idea who is paying for this rail connection. Neither railroad has anything on their websites about it, and the Mt. Vernon Register News has not covered this story. I found out about this back in January from a NS engineer who told me that there was a rumor going around abo
I plan on going back to Mt. Vernon around the first of November to see how much progress they’ve made. I hope they get it done this year.
I also wanted to mention that NS has been doing a lot of track work around Wayne County. They’re laying new ties and ballast. It might not be related to the construction over at Mt. Vernon, but I thought I’d mention it.