Over lunch today I just happened to get curious about the former PRR Chicago - New York mainline; specifically the portion from greater Chicago to Crestline, Ohio. I knew that NS wasn’t operating this portion and wanted to find out what was going on. So, lo and behold I came across current owner Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern (CFER). Can anyone tell me what their operations are like and what commodity groups are strong for them? I’m guessing that the mainline isn’t up to the lofty PRR standards these days, though.
I don’t know much about the operations/commodities, but I did snoop-up the former PRR/PC main that CFER uses now about 11 years ago. I checked it out on Hwy. 30 east of Valpo. My parents and I used to take that highway on the way to Decatur, IN and I’d keep my face plastered against the passenger-side window, straining for a glimpse of a PC headlight (and we’d see PC action there occasionally). I also rode Amtrak’s Broadway Limited over that line in 1986 between Crestline and Chicago.
That portion of the PC main was a problem maintenance-wise as I understand it. They used a crummy limestone-based ballast rock that tended to degrade into a mushy substance with rain and lead to a lot of slow orders.
When I was out there, the ex-PC main was single-tracked and the ROW didn’t look to be in real good shape. The signals had been removed as I remember and there was considerable vegetation growing between the rails and there were visible sags in the roadbed. Some locals told me they didn’t often see any trains on the line but they did come through mostly at night.
I’m glad that the CFER is making the former PRR mainline between Chicago and Crestline alive and well although it is disappointing that it’s not up to the standards of what it once was. Anyone know what the real story was on Conrail/NS kicking Amtrak off of this route?
Ed, where art thou?
CF&E seems to depend on grain, primarily, for their on-line traffic base. They also run a train to and from Chicago, crew goes up one day and comes back the next. For awhile, they were running a daily train each way between Chicago and Fort Wayne but business has fallen off to the present operation.
Occasionally, they run a grain train from Hamlet, IN, to Crestline, OH, where it is handed off to CSX, usually this train will have CSX power.
They also have the former GR&I branch, remnant, between Fort Wayne and Decatur, IN, site of another large grain operation.
There’s at least one yard job at Fort Wayne and another at Lima, a job that goes from Fort Wayne to Lima daily, I think, another that goes west toward at least Warsaw, IN.
NS maintains its trackage rights and has started operating, from all appearances, at least one westbound daily west of Fort Wayne, almost always an intermodal train and usually its train 235, but not always.
Upgrades coming east of Fort Wayne with a connection track being built at Bucyrus, OH, to facilitate moves between the CF&E and the NS Sandusky District toward Columbus, as part of the NS Heartland Corridor project. NS will operate via trackage rights, rumored to start up next year sometime.
I grew up in Bucyrus, just west of Crestline. Back when the Amtrak reroute was about to happen, there was a lot of press in our local paper about it.
From what I understood, Conrail wanted to abandon a section of the route out in Indiana that the Broadway and Capitol used. Since Amtrak would become the only user of that section of the route, Conrail was going to start charging Amtrak for track maintenance.
Also, from what I can recall, Amtrak was dealing with delays any time Conrail decided to run a train on the route across Ohio. There’s a passing siding on the east side of Bucyrus, but west of Bucyrus, the next siding wasn’t until Lima due to Conrail single-tracking the route around 1983.
Kevin
Unless it’s changed ownership, that grain operation in Decatur is Central Soya.
Oh to see those grimey black PC engines crawling across Jefferson St. again! The memories… [sigh]
Obviously that would have been really neat to have seen the mainline in its heyday with both the Broadway LTD and the General. IMHO, it’s a shame that Conrail’s decision to downgrade the portion between Chicago and Crestli
When I was on the ex-PC main in 1998 (?) it looked as I described. Hopefully they’ve upgraded the rail, ties and ballast since then.
I got curious too and Googled the CFER. Here’s where I found some photos:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoList.aspx?id=CFE
I also did a search by location and found some very nice pictures from the Decatur, IN area, mostly shot during the Erie Western days (the short-lived attempt to keep part of the EL main in operation). The photos show the PC (ex-GR&I branch) tracks still crossing the ex-EL main. Later the EL tracks east of the PC crossing were removed, the tower was scrapped and they (CSX? CR?) built a new connection from the ex-PC to the ex-EL curving from north to west to reach a canning plant I think on the west side of Decatur.
The inside of the NW depot there was special - my uncle would’ve been a station agent there at the time of the interior photo.
Looks like the CFER likes(ed) GP38-2s.
Now I’m really missing the old days!
Sadly, the ex PRR Main has been severed just East of Gary, IN, so CF&E trains have to to take a different route into Chicago. IIRC, they use CSX’s Barr Yard.
The Central Soya Company was bought by Bunge several years ago. The facility in Decatur, IN still processes soybeans. When CR/CSX serviced the plant, there was a daily train that somtimes ran 100 cars.
Sadly, the N&W line spoken of above (the former Cloverleaf/NKP from Toledo to St.Louis) has been removed East of Craigville, IN.
NS still dispatches the line West of Fort Wayne, and NS was running a train daily Eastbound, too, until that train was abolished due to low traffic. The line to Decatur is dispatched by the Pittsburgh West Dispatcher
I can still remember Conrail running fast freights and piggybacks through Bucyrus when the route was double-tracked. It was very nice to see.
I can also remember the line being single-tracked in 1983. Part of the route on my one school bus went over the tracks west of Bucyrus. I remember the rails of the north main disappearing (leaving the ties still in the ballast) and then a work train of gondolas with a crane on them removing the ties sometime later. At the grade crossings, the roads were temporarily filled in with loose stone or ballast for a while, which made for an interesting ride on the school bus when the back tires dug into it and started to spin.
But the remaining track was relaid with welded rail, which, at the time, was a good sign. Never imagined that it would go downhill so fast.
Kevin
The CF&E line to Chicago is alive and well, but it has changed recently. Living in Valparaiso since the late 70’s, and always within whistle distance of the line, I have monitored the line for quite some time.
When CF&E took over the line from CSX, it ran a train into Chicago one day and returned the next day. These trains started out about 30-40 cars and gradually increased in size. Then, around 2006 they began running daily trains FWCH and CHFW. The problem was the lack of crews and sidings to pass. They used the Valpo siding at times to meet (I saw a couple of these). The Valpo siding would only hold a 35 car train. It did create good railroading drama to see a meet on this line at night. During this time, the trains would run at nearly any time…even tho scheduled to run at night. Recrews were often needed as trains had a difficult time into and out of Blue Island Yard. I personally saw several trains in excess of 100 cars, often with blocks of soybeans for Bunge (ex Central Soya) in Decatur.
About a year ago the FRA came thru with an inspection crew and marked up over 30 defects and slapped a 10mph speed restriction on the line. That really fouled up operations. A private maintennace crew rehabbed the line lifting the speed to 40mph by fall of 2008. Rumors were that NS was helping fund the rehab with RailAmerica and that trackage rights would be executed with intermodals using the line between FtW and County (Hobart, In) where the NS and CFE ran parallel and a connection allowed trains to return to the NS ex NKP line. A question to a RailAmerica senior executive regarding this arrangement was met with a smile and a vague answer.
On December 3, 2008 NS train 25A ran east on the CFE. The 25A then became a regular early morning train, usually thru Valpo at 7 - 8am. 25A made a fine sight in the
Kevin is essentially right about why Amtrak rerouted off the former PFW&C. This was another cost that helped sink the Valpo commuter service.
Fort Wayne, the second-largest city in Indiana, wants new corridor passenger services rerouted through there rather than South Bend. New capacity and upgradinding will be necessary whichever route is chosen. Sharing trackage would be more cost-effective, but railroads and Amtrak don’t always play well together. Add to that the opinion of some that passenger services are more incompatible in optimal wheel and rail profile as speed increases above even 90 mph.
That old PRR ROW might be just the ticket to be taken over and rebuilt as a dedicated, passenger-only HSR corridor.
Inside Fort Wayne, the vast majority of traffic you see on this line is NS’s triple Crown using the lines as a staging area for access to their yard. I see triple crown trains stopped on this single track main, all the time, giving you an idea just what a priority these lines are.
NS also uses a portion of this line as a bridge between their new castle district (to cincinnati) and their NKP line into chicago. This by far is the heaviest moving traffic use this line sees.
On top of that I frequently see a scrap metal train westbound, that may actually be CF&E traffic
And there is a sulfur train that comes through from time to time, that really shows just how bad a shape this line is in. due to the weight of this train, there are sections where the rail bows up (BETWEEN WHEELSETS) high enough to pull the spikes right out of the ties, as the train rolls along.
I guess that CSX has some absurdly small restriction (in the lease agreement to CF&E) on just how many (few) trains CF&E can operate on this line per day. Makes the line pretty much worthless to anyone needing to move volume
Geez, it sounds like it hasn’t improved much since I was out there last. That ex-PRR main seems like it took a huge beating during WWI & WWII under gov’t control and it hasn’t recovered since.
I’m curious where you would aim such an HSR train. Columbus?
HSR needs to go through population centers, so the old Lake Shore line (the Water Level Route) direct from Chicago to Toledo and Cleveland is a much more likely route. The old PRR might be rehabbed by NS in order to take traffic off the Water Level in order to accommodate more passenger service, but the whole revamp would have to be paid for by the government.
In fact, if you’re looking for a good potential dedicated HSR line, the old Wabash right of way along the north borders of Indiana and Michigan is ideal. True, it no longer has tracks, but it ran through very few towns and was the shortest route between Chicago and Toledo, almost arrow straight.
The government did not control the railroads during World War II.
As for on-line city populations, the Fort Wayne route is 251,247 and the South Bend route is 229,698. Taking county populations, the Fort Wayne line is only 689,255 while South Bend is 820,696. The problem has been and remains that, other than a couple population centers, there is little other intermediate market between Chicago and Toledo. Other than beating driving, air travel is a strong competitor between major cities.
In terms of mileage, the Fort Wayne line to Toledo is 15 miles longer through Bryan, 13 miles longer but significantly faster to Detroit through Adrian than through Kalamazoo, 11 miles longer to Cleveland through Lima and Shelby (Mansfield), but 60 miles shorter to Columbus.
The reduced infrastructure costs in sharing the NS tracks and increasing capacity needs to be weighed against the number of trains and reliability. Fewer trains would be warranted at 110 than at 150 or 220 mph where segregated facilities would be desirable if not essential. Adding Pontiac (Detroit) trains to the number from Chicago results in a substantial volume between Toledo and Cleveland to the point that an alternative route through Lima may be desirable for some trains.
The CSX (former B&O) through Akron and Youngstown would be longer but faster seconday route from Crestline than the former PRR through Canton and Alliance to Pittsburgh from Chicago. The CSX would be a good route for the principal Chicago-Cleveland-Pittsburgh Corridor as well. This also would be a good route for an intrastate round trip to Columbus or Cincinnati from Youngstown.
Those scrap trains may have been NS trains LF14 or LF61 depending upon the day. NS has most of the traffic rights to the SDI plant in Columbia City. They take out scrap and come back with finished H-beams. I’m still waiting to see a rail train coming from the SDI rail plant next door.
The reason you see so many Triple Crown trains loitering on the CF&E is that Triple Crown’s main hub was carved out of the former Pennsy Piqua Yard. You should see fewer trains s