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Indiana Rail Road founder Tom Hoback to retire in 2015
As the night operator for the ICG at Bloomington, Indiana from 1974 through mid-1981, I want to correct an inaccuracy in the final paragraph above, The ICG did petition for and was denied permission to abandon the northerly 95 miles of the Indianapolis District, and the track conditions were truly awful in places, but the Hi-Dry, as the line was known to us employees, was never closed for more than a short period prior to sale to INRD – for track maintenance projects to comply with the FRA orders. Operations were an expensive nightmare for a few years though, as 10mph speed limits required crews to be relieved at Bloomington, Indiana near the middle of the district, only 56 miles south of Indianapolis.
Perhaps Hoback could put his talents to work and piece the transfer railroads in Chicago together. Chicago needs a proven leader to clean that mess up.
The railroad industry as a whole has darn few truly visionary leaders.
Hoback took a next to nothing railroad and turned it into a first class operation.
I am sorry he has decided to retire, but he’s truly earned it!
Tom Hoback deserves our respect. He took a broken-down old line that had been allowed to decay during the ‘bad old days’ of all the rail failures, and turned it into the robust enterprise that it is today. Congratulations, Tom. Have some fun in your retirement!
Unfortunately he was unable to save the Monon on the south end when CSX gave up. Even entrepreneurial spirit couldn’t overcome arcane CSX pricing terms. Nor the ICG “PD&E” line to Evansville he dumped to IHRC.
While I don’t dispute Hoback’s rail acumen, his real talent lie in his knowledge of geography, specifically, coal geography.
His outmaneuver of CN to get western coal into Ameren/CIPS Newton by building a parallel track out to the plant from the east was probably one of his best moves.
He isn’t a rail charity, but I was wishing he could find cheap coal near Poseyville, especially with a power plant near Mt. Carmel. Someone still needs to go pick up that abandoned CSX hopper on isolated rail in the center of town.