Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed response, the preceding plethora of numbers notwithstanding (and fortunately not too much of a deterrent).
I can readily see that the value of the bowl tracks is driven more by the “zero-sum game” aspects of the land/ yard infrastructure/ and available blockings, than by a simple replacement or addition acquisition and construction cost estimate. In that context of being a part of a “unique” asset of fixed or limited size, assigning the higher “opportunity cost” value makes more sense.
Your other comments about the principles and nuances of blocking practice are of course most informative and insightful from experience, as usual. I want to digest them further before responding - there may not be anything more for me to say on that.
Is it safe to assume that “long easts” refer to interlined freight from a western carrier to an eastern carrier (such as UP to NS)? Quite a bit of that type of freight seems to be built at North Platte and Galesburg for direct movement thru Chicago to Elkhart, Williard, Conway, and Selkirk. How much of it is actually humped in Chicago? Does Clearing Yd provide that much service? Proviso probably does.
The entire routing/blocking is something we have discussed earlier and seems very dynamic. Systems seem to have been developed which will handle any possible O/D combination, yet the system remains fluid for change. The information driving these systems must be very detailed and powerful. Case in point…with the sudden reduction in traffic the past year, railroads seem to be able to reblock traffic flows and cancel trains.
How quickly are the railroads able to make such adjustments? What drives these adjustments…in other words at what point does an operations dept in conjunction with marketing decide that this train will be cancelled and therefore we will add 48 hours to transit time?
On a micro level, the past two years has seen the Chicago Ft Wayne and Eastern drop from daily runs to and from Chicago to every other day and now down to 2x weekly. Granted, the CFE is not nearly as complex a system as say the NS or CSX, but 2x weekly is a very severe drop in service. Of course with daily service there were operations issues and most trains were recrewed.
RWM, are there any indications that StL might become a more important railroad junction point in the future? Or has the Meridian Speedway eliminated that possibility? Granted, the M/S handles Southeastern traffic primarily that wouldnt go thru StL, but prior it passed thru New Orleans or Memphis, which would seem to open more capacity at either of those locatio
When the Santa Fe really began to emphasize intermodal with trains such as the #188 50 hour schedue from Chicago to LA, St. Louis was really left in the dust for that growing business.
The rate structure had a lot to do with it. The intermodal rates to/from the west coast were “equalized” between midwestern/southern terminals in Chicago, Danville, St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans to/from west coast points such as LA, Oakland, Portland and Seattle. The charge to ship two trailers (it had to be two) from any origin to any destination was the same.
Trailers moving between eastern points and the west coast moved on combination rates, generally a seperate rate applying east of the junction point and the equalized rate west of the junction point. The rates to/from the east were higher to/from St. Louis than they were to/from Chicago. This meant the total through charges to/from the west were higher via St. Louis than Chicago. The result was obvious, the trailers went through Chicago.
And St. Louis couldn’t compete for this traffic on service either. Santa Fe set the standards for intermodal service and they didn’t go to St. Louis. On a route not involving the Santa Fe, Yellow Freight would pig its hot LTL loads from St. Louis to the Pacific Northwest thrrough Chicago routed either ICG-Chicago-CNW-Fremont-UP or ICG-Chicago-BN. The more direct service from St. Louis wasn’t good enough. (Although the MoP kept trying and would temporarily get the business back from time to time.)
What about the BSM out of St Louis? It was single line service between StL and LA…and on a pretty darned hot schedule.
As an aside, if you want to read a great railroad book, pickup Fred Frailey’s Blue Streak Merchandise. It is an interesting look at modern railroading, post depression, thru the eyes of one train.
I re-thought some of our exchange of posts yesterday, and now add these further thoughts:
Your $10 million for the 2 bowl tracks to sort and hold long-east cars for via St. Louis is probably much closer to the mark as the “value to the enterprise” of them, as opposed to my replacement construction cost estimate. I got to thinking along the lines of accomplishing the same task by other means - namely a container sorting yard. I believe it was greyhounds who in the RoadRailer thread a week or so ago stated that intermodal lifts cost around $50 each. Using that as a base, and allowing for at least 1 container at 20+ tons each to replace each railcar at 100+ tons each (and that’s for just for 263K cars- and could well be 4 to 6 containers instead), that means it would cost around $50 for each railcar to substitute the class yard’s sorting function at a container yard. So, for those 200 long-east cars per day, the 2 bowl tracks in that class yard is providing 200 x $50 = $10,000 per day of value, x 365 days per year = $3,650,000 per year, which is comfortably close to and still above your figure, to capitalize out at $10 million.
And now, just for the heck of it: Figuring it takes 5 containers to equal 1 railcar at $250, that’s $50,000 in sorting value per day ==> $18.25 million per year of value, at a Cap Rate of 0.16275 per annum (10 years, 10 %) would yield a capitalized value of $112+ million for just those 2 bowl tracks ! [:O] (If each track is 6,000 ft. long, that’s around $9,300 per LF.) [:-,] I would hope the local highway dept. would think twice about the possible amounts it might have to pay as and for “fair and just compensation and market value” before its decide to condemn those bowl tracks for its next Interstate highway proje
’ Don’t know much about Peoria, except I did drive through there once. That should qualify me as some sort of internet expert, don’tcha think?[;)]
I see the reference about Peoria being the non-railhub from time to time. What about Peoria made people ever think it had a chance as a contender? Didn’t one of the eastern trunklines, like B&O, PRR even have a line to Peoria?
I often wondered why the RRs did not get together and make a multiple RR owned double (or more) track RR out of the old TP&W from Fort Madison to Ft Wayne and some connection to the old NYC route to avoid Chicago for all the long west to long east traffic. This type of connection would provide connection to the BNSF, UP, and KCS on the west end and the NS, CSX, CP, CN on the east end. A large yard somewhere around Webster, Il could handle what switching would be necessary.
I know: Every RR will be afraid of loosing some revenue.
I see the reference about Peoria being the non-railhub from time to time. What about Peoria made people ever think it had a chance as a contender? Didn’t one of the eastern trunklines, like B&O, PRR even have a line to Peoria?
Some railroads took advantage of Chicago congestion and delays to market their Peoria Gateway routes, namely the M&StL (following its merger with the Iowa Central on New Year’s Day 1912), the Nickel Plate (following merger with LE&W in 1922) and the TP&W (George P. McNear bought this railroad in 1927 and then promoted it as a bridge route between the ATSF at Lomax and the PRR at Effner). Interurban Illinois Terminal gained a connection with the P&PU in 1914, and thus a connection to steam roads (and as industries sprang up, so did Peoria Gateway business). The Peoria Gateway also handle north-south traffic flows between the Rock Island and the Chicago & Alton/GM&O, Illinois Central and Illinois Terminal. After acquiring the Chicago, Peoria & St. Louis into Pekin in 1926, the C&IM solicited bridge traffic between Peoria and Springfield or Taylorville (B&O and Wabash connections). The Peoria & Eastern (leased to the Big Four and later, New York Central) solicited bridge traffic between Peoria and Indianapolis.
Other carriers, such as the CB&Q, C&NW and PRR did interchange business at Peoria because some shippers preferred to route their traffic that way, or in some cases Peoria was the only logical point of interchange.
Through the 1950’s, the Peoria Gateway handled much east-west transcontinental interchange business.Then, the Gateway began to decline. The C&NW took over the M&StL in November 1960, and discouraged Peoria routings by downgrading Minneapolis - Peoria freights 19 and 20. Leasing the Wabash at the same time it purchased the Nickel Plate in October 1964, Norfolk & Western convinced shippers to g
I often wondered why the RRs did not get together and make a multiple RR owned double (or more) track RR out of the old TP&W from Fort Madison to Ft Wayne and some connection to the old NYC route to avoid Chicago for all the long west to long east traffic. This type of connection would provide connection to the BNSF, UP, and KCS on the west end and the NS, CSX, CP, CN on the east end. A large yard somewhere around Webster, Il could handle what switching would be necessary.
I know: Every RR will be afraid of loosing some revenue.
Another reason is that TP&W doesn’t even go to Fort Madison, and its eastern terminus is at Logansport, Indiana. Since BNSF and UP serve Peoria and TP&W has connections with CSXT and NS in Indiana, acting as a bridge route is still possible, though max track speeds of 25mph (and numerous 10mph slow orders) make the line non-competitive.
A solution to the revenue division issue perhaps to return to Class 1 ownership of the TP&W. If owner RailAmerica agrees, that is.
Sometime back in the early 1970s (I think) there was an article in Trains suggesting doing just this with the Kankakee branch (of the ATSF ?), to be called the “Kankakee Belt”. There was also some other criticism of the concept - I recall that was because that line had no traffic base of its own, and it would require additional blocking for cars headed that way - otherwise, Chicago (only) cars would end up going that way, too, or Kankakee cars would go to Chicago anyway. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the reference to it in the Index to Magazines below - I’ll have to try another method later on.
NKP’s Peoria Division, Lake Erie & Western District - the other end of that division was Frankfort, IN.
New York Central leased the Peoria & Eastern, and in its heyday ran two manifest trains daily in each direction between Peoria and Indianapolis.
We also had the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Peoria Secondary coming out of Terre Haute, though it was the ugly stepsister (though, ironically, most of the line survived into the 1980’s). The TP&W handled most Peoria area PRR traffic.
I made a short post yesterday and mentioned the physical issue of a bridge. Like most short thoughts I probably created more obfuscation. What I was really driving at was the costs associated with a bridge at St. Louis. More importantly, we need to go back and look at things in the time frame of 1850-60.
As RWM stated “MARKETS is Markets is Markets”(well, it’s what he meant). As stated in my post, North Calif,/Oregon/Washington is on everyone’s radar. What is the route that is of the lowest capital? Yes, the Pacific surveys are out determining feasible routes. But geographically, almost anyone can see that Chicago, across N. Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming(using modern state names) provides the most direct route. St. Louis is obviously going to involve a significant amount of additional mileage. So first check for Chicago.
What about the gauge problem? Chicago roads are all mostly on a common gauge of 4 foot - 8 inch. At St. Louis, the eastern direct connection is the M&O to Cincinnati at 6 foot. Most of the lines out of St. Louis going west are 5 foot- 6 inch. The old South is on 5 foot. Going through St. Louis requires “cross-docking” everything as opposed to interchanging in Chicago. Another check for you know who.
We can’t forget the concept of developmental railraoding. Everyone was of the opinion that if you build it, they will come. St. Luois is on the edge of the old Northwest territory. Chicago is near the heart of it. What are the capital requirements and where do we find them? St. Louis is out of the way geographically, has the less favorable geography going west, it presents a host of operational incompatibilities with the various gauges, and that silly waterway is going to require a really large expenditure, and if all that happens, there is still no “visible” market that can’t be reached from Chicago more cheaply.
All of the above seems to argue for Chicago’s natural importance. Once the tracks were built to that location, the die was cast. The cost
Four reasons: regulatory, economic, strategic, and traffic.
Regulatory: Under the ICC it would have required a complete “Rock Island sized” application and we all know how long that took and how well it worked out. Under the STB it would probably trigger a revisit of the ICC Termination Act by Congress because it has such broad affects on railway competition and service.
Economic: The cost to do this is imponderable because costs are shared and making cost allocations are like grabbing jello with your fist. Who pays what? The guy who saves the most mileage? The guy who moves the most cars? The guy who moves the heaviest cars? The guy who moves the highest value cars?
Strategic: This would invariably benefit some railways more than other. Why would a railway with a good position want to help a railway with a bad position? That’s a license for a stockholder lawsuit.
Economic: The biggest problem of all. There isn’t enough economic incentive to go around Chicago to justify any sort of major investment in a bypass, since so much of the traffic is moving just to Chicago. Especially with intermodal freight, which moves “mine run” off the docks; to sort it out on the docks into “Chicago” and “not Chicago” chews up too much high-cost dock space and inserts too much delay into the travel times.
I made a short post yesterday and mentioned the physical issue of a bridge. Like most short thoughts I probably created more obfuscation. What I was really driving at was the costs associated with a bridge at St. Louis. More importantly, we need to go back and look at things in the time frame of 1850-60.
As RWM stated “MARKETS is Markets is Markets”(well, it’s what he meant). As stated in my post, North Calif,/Oregon/Washington is on everyone’s radar. What is the route that is of the lowest capital? Yes, the Pacific surveys are out determining feasible routes. But geographically, almost anyone can see that Chicago, across N. Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming(using modern state names) provides the most direct route. St. Louis is obviously going to involve a significant amount of additional mileage. So first check for Chicago.
What about the gauge problem? Chicago roads are all mostly on a common gauge of 4 foot - 8 inch. At St. Louis, the eastern direct connection is the M&O to Cincinnati at 6 foot. Most of the lines out of St. Louis going west are 5 foot- 6 inch. The old South is on 5 foot. Going through St. Louis requires “cross-docking” everything as opposed to interchanging in Chicago. Another check for you know who.
We can’t forget the concept of developmental railraoding. Everyone was of the opinion that if you build it, they will come. St. Luois is on the edge of the old Northwest territory. Chicago is near the heart of it. What are the capital requirements and where do we find them? St. Louis is out of the way geographically, has the less favorable geography going west, it presents a host of operational incompatibilities with the various gauges, and that silly waterway is going to require a really large expenditure, and if all that happens, there is still no “visible” market that can’t be reached from Chicago more cheaply.
All of the above seems to argue for Chicago’s natural importance. Once the tracks were built to that lo
I’ve got Frailey’s BSM book. I really like the photo of the ten wheeler with the wooden boxcars when the BSM was created to handle LCL from St. Louis.
In the “TOFC Era” the BSM only went to LA and SP couldn’t maintain a 50 hour schedule with the train. (Page 99) They gave 4th morning delivery out of St. Louis while ATSF was 3rd morning out of Chicago. Santa Fe was the service route to everywhere they went, and they went a lot more places than LA. When everyone was charging the same regulated freight rates west of Chicago and St. Louis, there was little reason not to route intermodal ATSF out of Chicago.
Heck, ATSF could compete with the BN from Chicago to Denver.
CNW-UP could compete with the Santa Fe to LA and the Bay Area. Santa Fe didn’t go to the Pacific Northwest and CNW-UP was the service route up thata’ way. BN took a while to get its Pacific Northwest TOFC act together. Anyway, the good service was out of Chicago, not St. Louis.
SP just got the “leavins”. The service route from Chicago to Tucson was ICG-St. Louis-SSW/SP. Big deal. I was once interviewed with the SP. I actually made one of their guys mad when I mentioned that the ICG-SP route was the service route to Tucson. He wanted to know why other SP routes weren’t “Service Routes”. I had to point out that ICG-SP was the only real intermoal route from Chicago to Tucson. On other routes the trailers would move through yards and on boxcar trains.
I’m sure that Chuck is referring to the Ohio and Mississippi, and not the Mobile and Ohio. I was not aware that it was six foot and not the standard of the East.