A fallen flag carrier seems to have finally received much delayed national coverage of the Illinois Central Gulf. I have developed a “following” of the ICG. The two national photo essay publishers have come out w/history books of this rr. The lastest is a six part series, of which I already have the first pair. This is an interesting carrier and reading of the 70s era intermodal ops, the not-talked-too much of lines arcoss MO & IA again has a history to tell. In my BNSF hire class @ Kancks in '98. I hired w/ a guy w/worked ICG/CMNW/GWWR there (still working)and need to get in touch w/him about his ICG yrs. For anyone who may have knowledge of the mainline south of Chicago: what are the crew change districts to at least Carbondale, the home terminals, and how many locations does CN still maintain yard jobs through there?
It’s been a while, but I remember it took seven crews to move a freight train from Chicago to New Orleans. Remember, the railroad split south of Effingham, IL with two routes to Fulton, KY. The eastern most route, known as the Edgewood Cutoff or the Blueford Cutoff, had much less gradiant but was single track.
If I remember correctly on trains through Carbondale crews changed at:
Champaign, IL, Centrailia (or Carbondale), IL, Cairo, IL, Memphis, TN, Canton, MS, and McComb, MS.
On trains through Blueford crews changed at:
Champaign, IL, Blueford, IL, and Fulton, KY north of Memphis.
But wait, there’s more! The railroad split again south of Memphis with the main freight route going through Yazoo City instead of Canton, MS. For trains routed through Yazoo City the crews changed there instead of Canton, MS.
I don’t know the home terminals.
This union required blatant overmanning, along with contract required BS such as “Tabulated Locals” just bled the company dry. And the unions were quite happy to do that.
On some of those stretches wasn’t one of the lines ex-GM&O, and the other ex-IC?
Regrettably, they were far from the only railroad to suffer from this in the ‘bad old days’ of the 60s, 70s and to a lesser extent 80s.
What is a “tabulated local”?
I missed the ICG but I worked at Fort Knox, KY for two years while working for EDS while assigned to the U.S. Army Recruiting Command and I remember the former ICG climbing up grade South of Louisville towards Fort Knox along the Ohio River. One of the most beautiful pieces of railroading I have seen and pretty close to mountain railroading with it’s trestles and grades. The Army spur into Fort Knox did significant business with the line and the Army had 2-3 red high hood Geeps stationed on Fort Knox, and engine house and track with warehouses everywhere. The two combined always had somewhat of a show going on each day on the drive into or out of work. That was 1995-1996. Forget the railroad named shortline that ran the IC line back…I think it was Paducah and Louisville.
I am sure the line is still in use and if your ever in Louisville, Kentucky it is worth a side trip.
SF Brakman: Here is a link to a website that may interest you in your search for things ICG: Mississippi Rails @ http://www.msrailroads.com/ICG.htm
This one of thiose site with lots of links, and all sorts of information in regards to ‘Rails in Mississippi’ It is one of those site that will require, coffee in hand, and some time to explore.
Here linked is an ICGRR Locomotive Photo Roster @ http://rrpicturearchives.net
This linked site has a lot of info on the ICRR (and ICGRR) listed and searchable under the ‘CONSIST’ side of its website page: @ http://illinois-central.net/
Hopefully this will give you sone resources in the search.
No, the Chicago-New Orleans main line was all ex-IC. The two ex-GM&O lines though Mississippi were not in good shape.
A tablulated local, or “Tab Local” was a local freight that had found its way in to the labor contracts. The provisions of the labor contracts required that the full four person crew be paid whether the local was operated or not.
The crew got paid even if there were very few (or no) cars to move. So the train operated six days per week.
We couldn’t spend the money twice. So main line service, where we could have developed more business, suffered because we had to operate trains that had outlived their economic purpose. Markets change readily, labor contracts don’t.
On the local level - the provisions of the contracts CAN BE CHANGED. It does require Division level company management and Division level union official being able to sit in the same room with wanting to physically kill their counterpart.
In my experience there have been numerous local modifications to the
How many thousands of jobs disappeared because of this war of attrition? Such blindness.
It might be that we are looking at the story of the Illinois Central as just one of a railroad that was pretty successful; to the extent that, because of its railroad success it became a target of ‘Invesors’ { BaltACD: Been there, done that,?? }
The acquisition of the GM&O RR in 1972 was essentially, mostly, a parallel property acquisition. Then in the Fall of 1972, the Commuter train Crash{some 40+ killed, and 3330+ injured} had to have been a corporate nightmare?
Recall that in the 1980’s, the ICG operated some 8K + Miles of railroad on somethiong like 33K+ of ROW. ‘Rationalization’, and ‘RR for Sale’ became a couple of key operative business phrases where the ICG RR was concerned; out of those processes came several ‘new’ entities: CNW&WRR, P&LRR,MSRC, CC&PRR.
And the ‘dance’ continued, about 1988, Illinois Central Industries spun off its railroad operations and became the Whitman Corp.{ included, a number of food related properties: Chocolates, Soft Drinks, Food Franchiees, etc}. About 1988 the railroad dropped the “G” from its name, and became once again, Illinois Central RR…Then, in 1998/99, the railroad property was sold to the Canadian National, and began operations as CNR.
A friend of mine worked IC and ICG in the dispatching side from the late 60s through retirement. He describes that period as at best, very tumultuous, and he wasn’t some malcontent. Although the EHH years were the worst, other execs were also very myoptic.
This doesn’t sound that different from the income protections and guarantees that still exist in our contracts for employees working in assigned service, our term for this type of claim is “held and not used”. If the company fails to use the assigned crew at their assigned start time or within their call window they are not required to accept another call, and will still get paid at least the basic daily rate.
This protection, along with the 100 mile/8 hour minimum day, exists so that the company cannot screw around and pay regular employees less than a living wage while also holding them back from other work just so that they have a crew available.
Of course, in our current system the company is free to create and abolish assigned jobs as long as they give the appropriate advance notice, I believe it’s a couple weeks.
As you can imagine, held and not used payments are not common these days, and usually occur due to unforeseen situations like locomotive failure or lack of available employees to fill out the crew, not due to lack of work. In the case of a slow day, the crew will still be called and do whatever work there is, and then sit around until their 8 hour shift is done. Or a very short train/light engine will be operated i
I’m pretty sure it was the other way around. Trains Magazine, many years ago, had a story on this – IC “the company” had a division doing some manner of investment banking which grew wildly more profitable than the tired old overregulated and taxed-to-death railroad, so in the best '60s conglomerate tradition they spun off the original raison d’etre railroad to concentrate on profitability.
I don’t think the GM&O lines through Jackson ever qualified as more than streaks of rust at any time in the ICG years. But I was not there.
I think that’s “Just and Reasonable”. To use an old time phrase. If an employee has an assigned job, and that job is not required that day it’s not his/her fault. The employee’s bills don’t go away.
The kicker is that the ICG couldn’t abolish the assignment without union agreement. Good luck with that. So we were stuck with these four person crews poking along no longer needed branch lines and elsewhere while larger markets for main line service suffered. Can’t spend the money twice.
The operation of tabulated locals was extensive but I don’t remember, if I ever knew, exactly where they were required.
Is your friend the guy who blew #51 by a SCHEDULED pick up in Kankakee and left 10 or so very hot R.R. Donnely TOFC loads sitting for two days? If so, I’d like to talk with him. I took the phone call from a very upset major customer first thing on a Monday morning.
I had communicated that it was a “Hot Pick Up” and provided the flatcar numbers before I went home Friday. I came in on Monday with the phone riging and a very, very, very upset customer on the other end of the phone call. The loads were still sitting in Kankakee when they should have been delivered in New Orleans.
I like when a customer demands a super hot shipment - then it sits in the industry for a few days before it gets loaded/unloaded (we ran it there so fast it cooled down?). Sometimes there’s a huge disconnect between the people in the office that order the cars and the people on the floor that unload/load/use the product. (this is not a rare incident, either - “the customer who cried hot” ).
Did you tell the crew or someone else?
33,000 + miles? Am I reading that correctly?
No, I didn’t tell the train crew. I was in intermodal marketing and pricing. I didn’t talk to train crews unless I was riding a train. But I did communicate that the P/U was “Hot”.
This wasn’t anything beyond moving the TOFC loads on the schedule we sold. I noted it because I wanted the schedule observed, nothin
Probably more to the story. Usually is.
Note: Convicted One: My error! [sigh][banghead] The amount of track was accurate…The ROW comprised some 13,522 mi…
My error was that I had confused TON Miles of freight; which for 1980 was 33,276 MIllion Ton Miles of revenue freight…
[tup][tup] Nice catch ! [swg]
Doubtful, but I don’t actually know. I do know (as do the dispatchers and road crews far better than I) that these foul ups are complex with multiple sides to the story, generally related to faulty communication by one or more parties involved.