In the last Trains Magazine, there was a pretty good article about a run on the IC with 143 loads of coal from Champain to Chicago. The gravamen of the story was surmounting four hills in the rain, with a U-30, a GP-10, and a GP-9, that wasn’t pulling too hard, on the point.
Anyone who has spent much time in Illinois–especially northern Illinois–knows that it is somewhat of a joke to discuss surmounting grades in Illinois. There is less than 1000 feet difference between the highest and lowest elevation in Illinois.
Yet, by reading the article, you would think that bringing the 143 coal loads to Chicago was like crossing the Continental Divide with a pack of mules pulling a cement train, which leads me to my question:
Given that most railroads attempt to provide a train with just enough horse power/tractive effort to conquer the “rulling grade,” is there that much of a skill difference between taking a train up a “hill” in Illinois as compared to Colorado? Stated differently, although you have three times the grade in Colorado, the engineer in Colorado probably has 3 times the horse power/tractive effort.
Also, I realize that taking the train down the grade is where 80% of the skill comes in, where added horse power might not be that much of a help–although the added dynamic brakes are a huge benefit.
You are certainly right about the difference in grades and curves in CO as opposed to those on the northern end of the IC’s Illinois Division. Champaign to Chicago was almost as straight as an arrow and the ruling grade (northbound) was at Paxton which was certainly no more than 1% if that. I expect the problem had more to do with sub-par performance of the locomotives than any thing else making train handling a real challenge for the T&E crews. Beginning about 1960 (possibly a year or two earlier) the IC did a 180 degree flip-flop doing everything on the “cheap”. Maintenance of Locomotives, rolling stock and track and capital expenditures reduced to an absolute minimum and a wholesale abandonment or spin off of secondary and branch lines. The result was a precipitous decline of a once premier railroad to very much a second class property characterized by reduced sppeds and breakdowns and headed for the same fate as the Rock Island until the CN stepped in.
Keep in mind that you’re talking about anywhere from 15,000 to 18,000 tons of train here (I am assuming that there was probably a mix of 70- and 100-ton-capacity cars here, gross weight between 110 and 131 tons a crack). Your typical unit train on CNW (my turf) was a little over 100 coal gons weighing about 131 tons each. And as lean on motive power as CNW was, they nearly always managed to put at least three SD40s or better on a loaded coal train. So, compare 9000 horsepower on CNW with 6600 on IC for about 15 percent more train, at least. As underpowered as the IC train in question was (I haven’t yet read this), I’m not surprised at the problems on relatively insignificant grades.
(I’ve also been involved in pushing a manifest train that had stalled on a grade somewhere between St. Francis and Butler. It doesn’t take much!)
So I’d say that it’s probably not so much a skill difference as a power difference in this case. There were differences in skills, too–engineers on the Midwestern railroads like IC and CNW had to learn about dynamic brakes, for example, long after everybody else knew about them.
I should probably leave this to the train drivers amongst us.[:D]
The key issue is dealing with the slack action. In a territory where the track is undulating up and down even at modest grades, the engineer has to attend to slack running and out. I don’t think they are supposed to do it, but sometimes engineers will keep the cars strung out using a light (as possible) brake application. However, if you have just enough horsepower to keep the train moving, a brake application may retard the train just enough to cause it to stall on an upgrade. So then you have to work with the slack action, and as the engineer says in the Trains article, notching up just as the slack is running out may get a knuckle or drawbar.
Comparativly, once you have 'em stretched out, crawling up a long mountain grade is a relative piece of cake. Assuming it won’t cause the train to exceed the speed limits, put it run 8, lean back, keep an eye on the gauges and enjoy the scenery. Of course, if there some down grade stretches in the overall climb, it gets a little dicey.
I really enjoyed, as you would imagine, reading that article. One does not normally associate Illinois or Indiana with grades and tough operating conditions. I was not aware of a “grade” thru Paxton, but thinking about it, there must be one. The IC passes thru Paxton in a cut, obviously to ease a grade.
Checking the IC employee timetable for 1974 the following information regarding tonnage ratings for Centralia to Chicago:
1750 hp @ 9015 tons
3000 hp @ 17710 tons
With the two old geeps and the U30C, that gives a theorical tonnage rating of over 35,000 tons, assuming that I understand the ratings correctly ( I probably dont, but the info is provided for others to comment on). Having grown up on the IC, I know those Geeps were pretty tired engines and the author indicated they werent pulling too well. Cant remember if it was raining or not.
Another question I would have would the mixing of 6 axle unit (U30C) with the 4 axle units have made a difference?
Are you sure that the IC began the cost cutting in 1960? I know in the mid 60’s it was doing so.
I am also going to challenge your comment of the IC heading for the same fate as the Rock until the CN stepped in. True, the IC was slipping away, but in the 80’s and 90’s they found their footing and actually became the premier US operating railroad:
1950’s operating ratio average 75.0% with it trending higher (72.% in 1950, 78.4% in 1959)
1960’s OR average - 79.4% with trending higher (81.1% in 1960, 83.9% in 1969…also lots of OR’s in the 77% range in the decade to lower the average)
1970 OR average - 83.6% with trending higher (79% in 1970 to 103.5% in 1979)…the wheels were obviously coming off the trains by then!
By 1982 the OR was 109.8%. However, at that time the railroad was shedding branchlines. In 1985 the railroad operated 4772 miles of lines. By 1990 it was down to 2773 miles and OR was 75.4% and dropping. By 1996 the OR was 64.4%.
CN bought a fine railroad. In many ways, the IC/CN merger was similar to the BN/Santa Fe merger. The acquiring railroad (CN and BN) basically put the acquired railroad’s operating program into place. Hunter Harrison became the CEO of CN. Rob Krebs became CEO of BNSF.
The IC ballooned to over 10,000 route miles when it took over the GMO. A look at a map of the railroad will show the majority of those miles were branchlines in Illinois and Mississippi.
I am sure the IC would like to have the Meridian/Shreveport line back. That was a mistake, but one must ask if it would have achieved the importance had it been with the IC.
The buyback I never understood was the Iowa line. It just didnt seem to make sense to me to purchase it back. Traffic never really materialized on it. At the time, the CN was running it’s Western Canada - Chciago trai
Whoa–in both cases, they’re talking less than 0.2 horsepower per ton! I doubt that many railroads operate anything like that any more. (For example, UP’s ZWASKP is supposed to get 2.5 horsepower per ton–in reality it comes to about 2.3.) I know that’s like comparing apples (and oranges) to lumps of coal, but still…
The GE was a 4-axle U30B. The GE would be the weak link. In that era GE’s wheelslip system was a joke. Grades must be very slight on that stretch. Soo Line, which also is an advocate of low power to weight ratios ( you can smell them coming), rates locomotives for .3 Hp/Ton on the River Sub. which has a ruling grade of .36 %.
having a HPT rating of .3 is very small, .5 is the least BNSF will let a train on a main line with, grain trains are given .8 for there HPT and transcon grain trains sometime as much as 1.5 HPT in DP mode. Z trains somewhere around 2.5, locals usually about .8.
I know running a train with .5 HPT is a very slow affair and any grades will just slow you to a crawl, definetely not good on the equipment.
Yes, and they always removed one of them before we took the train north. The only time we ever got 3 units was when the train came from the CSX going to Oak Creek–they just left the power intact.
Ah, yes. West Allis hill. Not too much of a grade (the steepest part is less than 1%). The main problem is that the toughest part of the pull is when the locomotives are going over all of the crossings between Lincoln Avenue and 92nd Street. All of the oil dropped from autos really makes the rail slippery through there. And if there is some dampness on the rail, forget making the hill unless you have at least .5hp/ton.
The skill level for the two scenarios mentioned are quite different. In Colorado, you are mostly going up or down a long hill, whereas in Illinois there are a lot of what are called “hogbacks”, which is slang for a track that has frequent minor hills such that if you have a long train, the front part of your train might be going up a slight grade, the middle of the train might be going down a slight grade, and the rear might be going up a different grade.
The skills to run in Colorado are more focused on keeping the speed and air under control (especially downhill) due to the huge potential for a runaway. I
It may well have been a few years later than 1960 when the ICG began its cost cutting. I grew up alongside the IC mainline about 25 miles south of Chicago and have fond memories of the days when it truly was the “Mainline of Mid-America”.
Western Electric transferred me to Shreveport in 1965 and the decline of the line to Meridian, which had once been the mainline of the Mississippi Division (headquartered at Vicksburg), was already very evident. WE shipped telephone apparatus from S’port to the West coast in TOFC’s on the Southern Pacific. We wanted to ship via TOFC to our Chicago and New York area distribution centers as well and made several trial shipments to both locations. Our product arrived with so much damage after rocking and rolling over the ICG portions of the routings that we abandoned the idea and shipped by truck until the Shreveport plant was closed in the 1990’s.
Shortly after the Southern Pacific acquired the ICG’s Chicago - St.Louis main I made a round trip on the Texas Eagle over that line. I remember places where the tree branches literally brushed the Superliner cars. The cars rocked and shooked so badly over that old jointed rail that I was fearful we would derail. The conductor told me the SP was installing new turnouts and CWR and sure enough where that work had been completed the ride was smooth as glass. My brother-in-law’s wife was from Carlinville and they drove there frequently from Chicago. I remember asking him why they didn’t take the train. He
Mark:
I always enjoy your commentary about the IC. Thanks for the clarification.
Who can actually state when the railroad started going downhill? Probably none of us. No doubt it just crept along as the $$ started drying up.
My little branchline thru town used to have 100 car freights on 35mph track. There were local crews that worked the track, running up and down the line in the putt-putt cars. About 1965 or so they disappeared. Very little work was ever done on that line after that. Traffic dried up and went away. So did the IC and then the shortline that operated it. It is now just a path with “No Trespassing” signs.
I think the old GMO line from St. Louis to Chicago would have been a low priority for IC to maintain. First, it really didnt handle much freight and there were bigger problems elsewhere.
A family friend was on a crew that did sperry type inspections on the IC. I should look him up for further clarification.
It may well have been a few years later than 1960 when the ICG began its cost cutting. I grew up alongside the IC mainline about 25 miles south of Chicago and have fond memories of the days when it truly was the “Mainline of Mid-America”.
Western Electric transferred me to Shreveport in 1965 and the decline of the line to Meridian, which had once been the mainline of the Mississippi Division (headquartered at Vicksburg), was already very evident. WE shipped telephone apparatus from S’port to the West coast in TOFC’s on the Southern Pacific. We wanted to ship via TOFC to our Chicago and New York area distribution centers as well and made several trial shipments to both locations. Our product arrived with so much damage after rocking and rolling over the ICG portions of the routings that we abandoned the idea and shipped by truck until the Shreveport plant was closed in the 1990’s.
Shortly after the Southern Pacific acquired the ICG’s Chicago - St.Louis main I made a round trip on the Texas Eagle over that line. I remember places where the tree branches literally brushed the Superliner cars. The cars rocked and shooked so badly over that old jointed rail that I was fearful we would derail. The conductor told me the SP was installing new turnouts and CWR and sure enough where that work had been completed the ride was smooth as glass. My brother-in-law’s wife was from Carlinville and they drove there frequently from Chicago. I remember asking him why they didn’
I know on the BNSF they run .4 HPT typically galesburg-chicago(Mendota sub). No DP(foreign roads wont take em). Un DP’ed at Galesburg and set up conventionally. On Chilli sub heading west from chicago to galesburg only big climb is at Edelstein hill. Usually if you have below .8 HPT it’d be a bit hairy(probably have time for a chess match or two). On the Beardstown sub heading south to Centralia (where I’m running at the moment), coal loads have to have .6 HPT minimum and DP’d(even then its dependent on weather and how good the engineer hits the hill). No DP has to be .7 or higher. Anything less and they’re pushing us up. The ore loads we run south at Beardstown are usually .6 HPT DP’d and about 21500 tons(160 loads). They are pushed regardless.
Several weeks ago, I got to pace a BNSF corn train as it moved northwest out of Sioux Falls, S.D. on a hilly route. By some coincidense our paths crossed about 4 or 5 times in 12 miles. At first I was unsure why a grain train of perhaps 20-25 cars had 3 locomotives. The cars were obviously loaded, and headed to the ethanol plant at Wentworth. Each time I got stuck at a crossing for train (darn the luck), I got to see the reason why the train seemed to have so much h.p. assigned to it. You have to admire the skill required to run a train up and down hills. At one point, the end of the short train was still climbing a hill. The middle of the train was banging together as all the slack came in. The engineer was throttling up to assult the next hill. It sure would be entertaining to ride with an engineer on a hilly route, just to watch the train handling skills of a man (or woman, I suppose) doing what he is good at. Even to an observer on the side of the road, it’s obvious there is a great skill factor involved in running a train on hills.
If you think about waves on an ocean or a lake that is what Illinois is like. If you have a train that is a mile or more in lenght, it is very possible that the engine is going down hill, while the middle of the train is going up hill & the back of the train is going down hill. You constantly have slack running in & out putting all sorts of stress on the couplers. You can very easily pull your train appart or have the train run in & start pushing you down the tracks & there an’t a dammed thing you can do except hang on. The skill recquired for an engineer in Illinois is high, even on good track.
Train handling - anywhere - is a function of three things…The power in relationship to the tonnage rating for the train…the length of the train…the physical characteristics of the territory the train is being operated on.
Even territory that has minimum grades can be very difficult to operate a long, maximum tonnage train as at maximum tonnage there is no margin for either operator or locomotive error. Simple train problems, such as the brakes not releasing as quickly as normal have the potential to stall the train on the grade. A locomotive that momentarily drops it’s load and then starts loading again can cause a near instantaneous slack run in and then maximum draft pull that at the least will shatter one or more knuckles it not pull the draft gear out of a car. Throw undulating territory into the mix and train handling gets that much more difficult.
I worked on a territory in Southern Indiana & Illinois where the engineers had handled general merchandise trains without particular troubles for years. Then the line began to receive train loads of Iron Ore, for about three months these trains were an accident waiting to happen as the engineers and Road Foreman learned how to handle these short heavy trains on this particular segment of road. Each segment of a railroad has it’s own operating challenges, be it gradient, curvature or the undulating combination of the two.