Railroads from Chicago to NYC

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

Hi All:

What railroads now run from Chicago to NYC ? …

I want to make up some car cards, routing from San Diego (to Los Angeles to Chicago) to NYC but am stumped getting there from Chicago …

Thanks,

Pepper

2

CSX, NS, CP.

Dave H.

3

Hi Dave:

Thanks for the info … now, a boxcar from my Santa Fe layout can be successfully routed to NYC, to load on a boat and go to Germany to the Westport Terminal …

Thanks again,

Pepper

4

Chances are that anything going on to Germany would be in a container today and probably go to Halifax, Nova Scotia for trans shipment.

5

Technically CP doesnt do it all on its own trackage…

it can do it, in a roundabout fashion, via trackage rights though.

Scot

6

Seems like a roundabout way to go from Chicago to the NW corner of Minnesota ( http://www.westportterminal.de/wt.html [;)]), but if it floats your boat, why not ?

Grin,
Stein

7

The question wasn’t “what’s the shortest route from Chicago to New York?” and it wasn’t “what route would an export shipment to Germany take from Chicago?”, it was which railroads run between the two cities. The CP runs between Chicago and New York, trackage rights are the same as ownership. They probably wouldn’t go to NYC for export anyway, more likely to someplace in New Jersey. There is very little rail service in NYC itself.

Dave H.

8

Well, not ABOVE ground. [swg]

9

Well, SE corner really, since CP runs from the Twin Cities down the Mississippi River, then cuts across Wisconsin to Milwaukee and Chicago. Of course it would probably have to go San Diego-Twin Cities via BNSF, who also serve Chicagoland, so they wouldn’t hand it off to CP unless it was going across the UP of Michigan and then thru Canada to the east coast.

Of course it’s true I don’t know that a container coming from San Diego would need to come all the way up to Minnesota anyway. In reality the shipper would probably try to avoid the congestion of Chicago if at all possible and go around it to the south on the way east.

10

Actually the shipper of a container would probably not be involved in the route at all and most likely wouldn’t even deal with the railroads. The shipper of the container would most likely deal with a third party consolidator, who would deal with the railroad. I would think it would be highly likely that a container from San Diego bound for the New York area would go through Chicago. It would come out of San Diego on the BSF, catch the Transcon to Chicago and then either the CSXT or NS to the New York area.

Dave H.

11

Amtrak’s three rivers service.

12

Actually, the Three Rivers is no more. The only Amtrak train between Chicago and New York is the Lake Shore Limited, unless you take the Capitol Limited to Pittsburgh and transfer to the Pennsylvanian.

Kevin

13

OP first asked about possible routings from San Diego to NYC. And got several good answers.

My comment was just based on his followup “now, a boxcar from my Santa Fe layout can be successfully routed to NYC, to load on a boat and and go to Germany to the Westport Terminal”.

It made me wonder if the OP had asked the right question.

That depends on what he was trying to accomplish.

Modeller Wolfgang Dudler is obviously located in Germany. But his layout “Westport Terminal” doesn’t model a place in Germany - it models a fictional town in th