Hi all,
I was in Springfield, Illinois recently and noticed that the tracks leading to the big electric plant owned by the Springfield municipal utility at I-55 and Stevenson Drive appear to have been abandoned. So, I’m curious. How does the facility get its coal? Any info is appreciated.
Might they be using oil?
Not sure. Years ago when SP owned the this line from Chicago to St. Louis line, they were running taconite (sp?) trains from MN to UT (some steel plant - maybe the only steel plant west of the Mississippi River). On the return trip SP would clean cars and haul western coal to IL area (plants and river ports), including the plant you describe. At the time they took this traffic from UP, and as I understand it UP was upset about losing the traffic. UP couldn’t compete since they didn’t have the revenue from the backhaul.
Alot has changed since then:
UP has aquired the SP. This traffic may have reverted back to prior UP routing.
IIRC, the steel plant in UT has been closed.
I think that Trains had an article on this years ago but I can’t recall.
I am living in Bloomington IL and remember seeing these trains running through town.
The traffic mix changed considerably since SP aquired UP. With the SP, this was their only gateway to Chicago. With the UP, this is one of many ways into Chicago and for the most part it is single track.
Perhaps the Springfield Power plant has switched to natural gas and no longer burns coal. Did you see a pile of coal anywhere in the vicinity which might indicate whether or not they still burn coal?
An energy consortium was proposing to build a new power plant in Bowie, Arizona, very near the Union Pacific’s Sunset Route, that would burn natural gas. After all of their permits were issued, natural gas prices skyrocketed as a result of hurricane Katrina, and they then proposed to burn coal instead of gas, using a technology called gassification. There was so much public opposition to the use of coal, that they had to retreat and decided to go back to their original plan and burn gas. They have not yet had a groundbreaking and the entire project now seems to be in limbo.
The plant in question is owned and operated by City Water and Light of Springfield and is one of two coal fired power plants the utility owns in Springfield. So now that we have established the plant is coal fired, where does the coal come from?
The trucking company my SIL works for hauls coal from local mines for the Springfield power plant off I-55. They was suppose to re-open those tracks last year, but didn’t for some reason.
The only other plant I can think round there is down by Pawnee south of town on 104. Their coal comes from the PRB on UP. Illinois Midland owns the tracks that services it.
It was Geneva Steel. Not only is the mill closed, it has now been demolished. It was the last integrated steel mill in the west. There used to be Colorado Fuel & Iron in Pueblo, CO and Kaiser Steel in Fontana, CA. Both closed in the 1980s, if I remember correctly. The finishing mills are still operated by Oregan Steel Mills and California Steel Industries, respectively.
Trains did have an article about these trains. I think it was March 1994.
Eric, you have it right. All three mills closed down their primary steel making capability in 1983. Geneva went to hot-standby, enabling a small local investor group to purchase the mill for scrap price and assumed environmental liability in
Except for the spelling of Oregon. [banghead]
The article in Trains mentioned that the Utah location was chosen for military reasons - i.e. a location not too far from the west coast, but far enough away that the Japanese would have no way of attacking it with carrier based aircraft.
It gets coal by semi truck from the Viper mine in Elkhart, IL and there is no rail access to either one of them. The rail bridge over the interstate is now used as a truck bridge between a storage site and the plant, the tracks stop at Adloff ln. In fact when they got a boiler they transloaded it off the NS on the west side of town.
And both of the Coal plants are actually right next to each other just different buildings. FYI one the plants Dallman exploded in November but you can’t real tell.
Are you certain that the SP served the Springfield plant that is referred to above? I thought it was the Kincaid/Pawnee plant that received this coal? To the best of my knowledge, and as long as I can remember those tracks were actually disconnected and the coal was trucked in from a Pawnee coal mine.
Gabe
No I don’t know who served the plant. Sorry to mislead.
Gabe,
I don’t think the SP went through Springfield either [but I’ve been wrong before], but coal does come in by rail to the Pawnee power plant on I/M tracks. The I/M has trackage rights on the CN/IC out of Springfield to their own tracks [I think was part of the Wabash], which run from about exit 82 on I-55 to Taylorville.
Coal use to be truck in from the Pawnee mine, but now it’s burning coal from the PRB using UP power.
inch
SP may not have gone through Springfield, but I’m seeing indications that SSW (Cotton Belt) did… Don’t have time to dig further right now, though.
Actually the article in Trains stated that the location was chosen 100% for regional economic development reasons. The “safety from Japanese attack reason” was publicized because it made good press copy, and would tend to keep people from wondering why a steel mill was being built in an economic wilderness without a single meaningful customer within 800 miles. There was considerable public suspicion at the time that the DPC funded plants were either a social engineering program advanced by New Deal Democrats or a transfer of wealth from middle-class taxpayers to the wealthy advanced by Wall Street Republicans, and both suspicions were at least in part correct. The Geneva siting studies, which were prepared by the University of Utah, never even mentioned attack threat in all of their 1000-plus pages.
In contrast, Kaiser Steel, a much larger mill, was sited at Fontana, 50 miles inland, where it would presumably be a juicy target vulnerable to Japanese air attack on almost a casual basis. Henry Kaiser wanted to site the mill at Los Angeles Harbor where it would have lower transportation costs but was overrulled by the Defense Plant Corporation because it would then be vulnerable to shelling by Japanese submarines and ships. Obviously there’s a disconnect between the two rationales – one plant can’t be built inland to protect it from air attack while another is not – so I prefer to go with the DPC and UofUtah siting studies, which discuss this in detail.
Wh
Springfield, Illinois, is on the main line of the Alton, which became the GM&O, which became the CM&W, which became the SPCSL, or “Spizzle” as it was referred to at the SP, a subsidiary of the Cotton Belt which itself was a subsidiary of the SP. SPCSL means “SP Chicago-St. Louis.”
RWM
RWM,
Thanks for clearing that up. I didn’t have time to dig around to find out about it, with 5 grandkids here.
inch
No SP never served this plant. Interesting though it could its my understanding that there is room for a track to the mine in Elkhart(on the SP) and the tracks could be reconnected to the plant (on the IC) however this would be a very short haul involving two railroads and no money to be made
But to clarify neither the mine or the plant have rail now