Hello, my buddy Chuck and I went on the Global III tour today with a couple of friends. You may recall my making a to-do about it on a past post.
This is not to give an exhaustive recount of the tour, because we heard a lot of statistics! One I do remember is that Global III contains 29 miles’ worth of track.
I didn’t catch the name of our tour guide, and I don’t think he tossed it. That’s a pity because he did a very good job IMHO, and without notes. The gentleman had worked for one of the several cold-storage warehouses in Rochelle’s industrial district, as a supervisor IIRC; and was on the Rochelle Town Council as well as the C of C, the Chamber of Commerce. IOW he seemed to know what he was talking about.
The entire tour took about an hour, as was promised, including transportation to and from Global III. Along with the eight dollar tickets, we each had to sumit a signed release to take the tour. We rendezvous’ed with our friends Ken and Lyn at the Petro Truck stop for lunch, as that was the parking place for people taking the tour. We finished lunch early and they (“they” being the Rochelle C of C), let us four get on the 1:00 p.m. tour not the 2:00 p.m. we’d booked. There was plenty of “give” for this because none of the bus runs we saw – two observing, one riding – were more than two-thirds full on a Trailways-type bus. IOW anyone could have walked up at the last minute and bought a ticket. Kids were welcome, but no discount. We had one pre-ad boy, accompanied by his parents, on our bus. The parents seemed to enjoy it and the boy was thrilled (dare someone say Future Foamer?).
It goes without saying the C of C had UP cooperation do to this, and getting into Global III occurred with the apparently effortless grace of the truly well-prepared. We just pulled up to what is probably an office building of UP&
Al, thanks for the excellent and informative report. I also visited Rochelle yesterday afternoon but not necessarily to tour Global III (which based on your report, I am glad I didn’t). I spent a short time at the Rochelle RR Park and was surprised to find plenty of parking at the park lot where I expected it to be completely full. My impression was the day was like any other Saturday in good weather at Rochelle. Plenty of UP and BNSF action on the mains but nothing out of the ordinary at the RR Park itself. I left the park proper and parked at the “old railfan area” along main and right at the diamonds. The weather got pretty snarky for a while with reported 70 mph plus winds (the winds sure did shake up my car quite a bit to be sure). A good time but a bit of a let down based on the advertising of the “Rochelle RAILROAD DAYS”.
Al, Global I is basically the former CNW Wood Street yard, as well as the former B&OCT Robey Street yard (which CNW bought to expand into). This is closer to Ogden and Western than to Canal Street. (Canal Street is another UP intermodal facility, pre-merger; it handles mostly domestic stuff.)
Global II is surrounded by Proviso, but it is not Proviso Yard. A fact for which I will be grateful until retirement, at least!
So, Ted, if you put the business of Global I, Global II, and possibly Global III together, you have UP’s contribution to the international trade. Now add to that BNSF’s facilities, keeping in mind that they probably handle a lot more international containers than UP does. The other four Class I railroads serving Chicago also have facilities that handle international containers. Most, if not all, of these are secured Ports of Entry. Then there’s the slight contribution made by the Port of Chicago, down at Lake Calumet. One doesn’t hear much about the St. Lawrence Seaway any more, but I guess it still contributes to Chicago’s status as an international port, when the railroads keep their bridges out of the way. Finally, O’Hare is always in the running for the country’s busiest airport–and a good-si
If you were there for the hailstorm, we were there at the same time, me hiding in the gift shop, the other three in their cars.
I certainly don’t regret having taken the tour – the couple we invited, Ken and Lin, seemed to enjoy it. Lin in particular, though normally she is not one for industrial tours.
Besides, what if I had to wait another five years?? But it was anticlimactic. OTOH it confirmed a lot of things I had heard that were probably true and one or two that weren’t.
Al, Global I is basically the former CNW Wood Street yard, as well as the former B&OCT Robey Street yard (which CNW bought to expand into). This is closer to Ogden and Western than to Canal Street. (Canal Street is another UP intermodal facility, pre-merger; it handles mostly domestic stuff.)
Global II is surrounded by Proviso, but it is not Proviso Yard. A fact for which I will be grateful until retirement, at least!
So, Ted, if you put the business of Global I, Global II, and possibly Global III together, you have UP’s contribution to the international trade. Now add to that BNSF’s facilities, keeping in mind that they probably handle a lot more international containers than UP does. The other four Class I railroads serving Chicago also have facilities that handle international containers. Most, if not all, of these are secured Ports of Entry. Then there’s the slight contribution made by the Port of Chicago, down at Lake Calumet. One doesn’t hear much about the St. Lawrence Seaway any more, but I guess it still contributes to Chicago’s status as an international port, when the railroads keep their bridges out of the way. Finally, O’Hare is always in the running for the country’s busiest
I was onboard one of the bus trips back in 2003 when the facility opened and it sounds like we saw about the same things–brief stops and no getting off the bus for any type of photography.
Those containers used for grain loading are done so for export–mostly soybeans going to Japan/Korea to make tofu. No use to load it into a covered hopper and then have to unload it at the port and then into a container or some other means to get it onboard an ocean-going ship. There are quite a few smaller grain elevators around the northern Illinois/southern Wisconsin area that load containers for this purpose.
I don’t think the high earthern berms themselves are considered wetlands–but they contain the wetlands located toward the western end of Global 3. I think my tour guide back in 2003 told us that the area that was paved over to make the loading pads had to be offset by the amount of holding areas for rainwater runoff.
I liked the tour, but I wish they would’ve talked more about the trains, they spent much more time talking about the history of Rochelle and about trucks than they did trains. I also think they could’ve made more stops to show people what was going on, we only stopped once to see a trailer get lifted off a truck. I also was wondering why nothing was going on at the railroad park. Did anyone go on the rail motor car rides by Main Street near the UP depot? That was pretty fun, but for some reason the city did not advertise this event or tell anyone it was there.
Apparently the NIMBYs of West Chicago and Maple Park didn’t need annual tax dollars like this and chose to “preserve” their little rundown towns and tell UP to take a hike. Plus the sales tax from diesel fuel, meals, snacks, etc., from the thousands of truck drivers that pick up and drop off at Globel III around the clock. Schools must be A-1 in both places. Good, clear thinking, eh?
De Kalb was also another proposed site of Global Three, but it also was shot down there. Rochelle is a better location than De Kalb or West Chicago anyway because there is more land for expansion out there, it is close to two interstate, and Rochelle is very transportation oriented, hence the “Hub City” nickname.
At $40/container, $600,000/year would mean 15,000 containers/year. Dividing that by 365.25 yields about 41.06776 containers/day, on average. Does 41 containers/day sound right?
Thanks for enlightening me. The things were too high to see the top of, which of course is necessary to keep sound from getting out. BTW the earth to build the berms came from the ground that had to be excavated (or scraped off) to build Global III.
Rochelle is still a small enough town (pop. on sign, 9,500) that people see to know each other. It is not a county seat and as a hub has kind of a blue-collar heritage. The people are very proud of their town and I don’t blame them. One of the points our tour guide made was that the Industrial Park RR line (which runs parallel for part of the BNSF where they run north-south) was not paid for by the city, but by the RR. City of Rochelle owns the line, though, and is responsible for its MOW – which they contract out, of course. It won’t be viewed as small hub in the country for long – it may be 17 mi. from DeKalb but north of Rochelle is growing in an exurban way.
Nothing is a given, but it seems logical that Rochelle area will reach to the North and DeKalb - Sycamore, which have essentially grown together already, will start heading west in search of more tract housing. Already there’s an enormous strip mall visible from I-88 that is west of the Sugar Grove exit and is anchored by Target and J.C. Penney. It would take about half an hour for a Rochelleite to drive there, and once there he or she will see the new 'burbs popping up all over. Another way to get to a Target or a Penney’s is to go to DeKalb on Rte. 38 and turn left just ahead of towntown and the UP crossing, head north for a couple of miles, and wind up in a retail district that has for all intents and purposes “glued” DeKalb and Sycamore together.
Pity that Rochelle is just barely out of the Chicago channels 2-5-7-32s’ range. The town is very close to the southeas
Dude, I didn’t know about it either – sorry to have missed the opportunity to ride a railcar. What seems to be lacking is in the public awareness / publicity / advertising realms. Railfans who make it to the Park see flyers; people who actively monitor the C of C and Park District websites might hear about it, but it might as well be on Mars for many of us. That’s the only thing close to criticism you will hear about Rochelle, I think I am on the verge of falling in love with the place, but some of these railfan events that materialize (or are scheduled and don’t) aren’t communicated well enough. Perhaps they’ll consider a subscription list pretty soon for an e-newsletter, if they haven’t already. I for one intend to join one or two re Rochelle.
I am, however, grateful we wanged our way onto the !:00 p.m. tour and not the 2:00 p.m. tour, because the tour must have had to head back to town in a brief but he11acious hailstorm.