I know these articles are from 2017 announcing expansion of facilities. I just spotted them though.
http://northamericanshalemagazine.com/articles/1995/a-mammoth-frack-sand-expansion
There is a frac sand prep plant on the south side of Rochelle, and on south on 39 by Troy Grove. The one south I believe is on the BNSF. The one in Rochelle is served by UP and BNSF.
Taylor, WI is on the former Kewaunee, Green Bay & Western now owned by CN.
Byron Township is on the CN Winnipeg- Chicago main line (former Soo and Wisconsin Central in that area of WI).
For these two, I would suspect CN may take the unit trains to Chicago for interchange to UP and forwarding to Texas, unless there is another interchange location further south.
New Auburn is north of Altoona, WI (Eau Claire area) and is on the former C&NW line from Altoona to Superior now operated by Progressive Rail Services as the Wisconsin Northern.
Progressive Rail interchanges the unit trains to UP at Eau Claire, WI.
For these unit trains, they move over the former C&NW to St. Paul, MN and then down the former Rock Island Spine Line to Kansas City, MO, where they likely head to the Dallas, Texas metro area on the former Katy, and then to the shale fields on the former Texas & Pacific.
Most of these frac sand operations are quite large and can be easily located on Google Maps with the satellite view.
Wisconsin Northern recently took delivery of two rebuilt SD45Rs with 16 cylinder locomotives to help handle the heavy frac sand traffic that is a staple of their line.
If you “fly” the line north from Chippewa Falls you will see a prodigious number of sand mining operations along the Wisconsin Northern.
Just as an aside, I live about a mile west of the CN in northern Illinois. The old Soo Line.
I see unit sand trains with BNSF power through here frequently. I don’t know what the Wisconsin origin point for the sand is. Other interesting CN trains include unit oil and containers. The cans run with mid train DPU. I never throught I’d see mid train power in Illinois.
UP has mid-train DPs on many manifest trains now.
A while back my supervisor at my biannual review said the railroad hopes frac sand will be the commodity that replaces coal. While I’m all for any business they can get, I couldn’t help thinking we’re doomed. Frac sand dropped way off once. There’s no reason to think it couldn’t, actually many reasons to think it could, drop off in the future. But it seems all they think about is the easy business. The kind that doesn’t require as much switching and isn’t easy to move by other modes.
Jeff
The sand empties I see heading east from Alberta are normally billed to Taylor, Blair, Hixton, Weyerhaueser, Byron and other locations in north-central Wisconsin. A quick search on Google Earth reveals several sand mines with their own railyards in the Taylor area alone:
The intermodal trains are normally set up with DP when they are built at the port. Trains from Prince Rupert normally have the DPU on the tail end, but trains from Vancouver can have it anywhere, and some of them have a second unit on the head end too. The Prince Rupert trains normally run with only 2 units.
Prince Rupert is now doing 3 10,000’+ trains a day, all with final destinations in Eastern Canada or the Midwest U.S.
^^^^ I rode the Skeena to Prince Rupert a while back before they really built up the container yard there back when Hunter Harrison was running CN. You should have heard the VIA Rail employees on the train. First, Hunter Harrison was secretly ripping up passenger sidings so he could use the “good rail” in the United States (lol). Hunter Harrison would be the death of the Prince Rupert line they said back then. Then they found out I served in the Army via conversation…shifted the conversation to Iraq no matter what I would say that war was after my time. Nope, had to talk Iraq and George Bush…oy. They were not locals though to be fair to Western Canada, that crew was definitely from Eastern Canada and you can guess what Province (heh-heh).
The ‘Frac sand moves’ seem to be a regular feature of our traffic through this area. [South Central Kansas; at the junction of the BNSF’s, Sou T-con and The Ark City Sub. They seem to move in both directions.
They stand out mostly, because of the ‘shorty’ hopper cars; in solid trains of them(?). Loaded, they’ll have generally, three units on the head-end, and a couple of DPU’s on the trail. Empty returns seem to just run with only head-end power, no DPU’s.
The closest UPRR line is to our west, by about 5 or 6 miles [The old RI./ OKT sub]. Mostly, their traffic seems to be primarily, grain hopper trains(?). UPRR seems to favor a single trailing unit in their DPU sets; unlike BNSF that seems to use two units, rarely, there is a single in DPU(?)trailing on BNSF’s trains .
Don’t laugh, that really happened, and then some.
I’m sorry you were conscripted into talking about Iraq instead of discussing trains. Hope it didn’t ruin the journey.
CN had to invest a significant amount of time, effort, and of course $$$ to upgrade the BC North line to handle Prince Rupert intermodal traffic, most notably installing CTC and increasing the height of tunnels to fit double stacks. Considering Hunter’s usual modus operandi there was some doubt among the rank-&-file that the money would actually be spent. Sounds like you rode during that time.
We see some frac sand trains go west to Colorado and Wyoming.&n
CPRS has also been busy moving the frac sand as well; primarily down to the KCITY gateway which has kept the Marquette Sub mainline humming south of La Crescent. I would expect that CTC gets installed on the Marquette Sub in the not too-distant future.
OK the CTC was installed as I remember on the line when I rode over it but very few passing sidings, in fact I was really surpised at how few passing sidings when I rode on it. I think we only passed 2-3 frieghts though on the whole 2 day experience. It was back when George W Bush was President…going to guess about 2004.
I always wondered about the bidirectional CTC, no passing sidings what good is the CTC for? But now with what you said they probably had not put the sidings in yet.
The best part about the Skena ride is among the 4 cars and round end dome observation, there were only 4 or 5 passengers, hence the VIA crew was pretty bored. They started to get friendly with a single woman about 45 that was traveling alone and they asked her where her husband was…she started to sob uncontrollable and stated while she was crying her husband died a few days ago before she boarded the train (I kind of felt bad for the crew then, they were just trying to be friendly and hit a land mine)…Oh well.
Anyways, there was either a Ferry strike at Prince Rupert or threat of one is what they told us, so most passengers ride the train for the inside passage Ferry and cancelled their trips…that is what they told us. It was great having my own passenger train (heh-heh)…in both directions no less.
We were almost full leaving Jasper but everyone but 5 of us detrained about 100 miles West of Jasper for some Motorcoach package tour (ICEFIELDS P
If you use Google to “fly” the Wisconsin Northern (former C&NW) from Eau Claire, WI up to Rice Lake, WI, you will see a significant number of sand mining operations along the line, most with their own load-out capability and rail car storage yards.
It may not be up to the level of the Powder River Basin for coal, but still impressive.
There are also a couple of sand-loading operations where it looks like the sand is being trucked in and transloaded to rail cars.
After “flying” over that piece of railroad and seeing the magnitude of the sand operations, it is not surprising that Wiconsin Northern has acquired two SD45R units rebuilt with 16 cylinder power plants.
There is a lot of tonnage to be hauled on that line to the UP connection.
One of railroading’s fundamental rules is to maximize your long haul. If I was CN, I would insist on interchange at Memphis for a Wisconsin to Texas move. In addition to maximizing my line haul, I do not have to do anything at Chicago except get it out of town on lines I control.
Mac
That definitely makes sense and is likely what is happening.
There are also several large sand mines on CP east of La Crosse, WI.
UP also has several massive sand operations located along its Milwaukee-Minneapolis main line between Wyeville, WI and Altoona, WI.
I count 6 major sand facilities on Wisconsin Northern which connects to the UP at the Eau Claire wye, and 3 major sand facilities directly on the UP between Altoona and Wyeville. That makes a total of 9. That is a lot of potential annual tonnage.
LA Ram Guy:
I have made the trip to Marquette, Iowa from Dubuque a few times to see customers and always enjoyed the interaction of the CP and the river. What is the train frequency these days on that line? It must be healthy if CTC is being considered. Are sidings in place to handle the potential growth.
Would seem that with the daily boxcar trains plus grain plus ethanol plus sand this could see 8-10 trains daily…is that in the ballpark?
Slightly off subject but last night returning home from Lincoln, Il on I55 there was a southbound UP manifest and it had DP power on the rear. So, is that normal operations now for UP on flat lands?
Ed
I’ve seen it in Dallas, TX and Kansas City, KS for UP primarily, BNSF sometimes. Seems more UP trains have that setup than BNSF as I still see a fair number of BNSF with the end of train device in the last coupler.
UP has been running some longer trains of late. Possibly as part of their 55+0 initiative - 55 Operating Ratio and 0 Injuries.
This is probably their version of the EHH “long trains, precision scheduling” philosophy.
See Slide 19 in this document:
Appears that UP measured performance SUCKS right along the Precision Scheduling line.
Dwell up and Velocity down.