Our family went to the Tulip Festival at Windmill Island Park in Holland, MI last Saturday. There was a BUNCH of people there! We had to stand in line for nearly an hour and a half to get in!
Fortunately, a train showed up to help us bide the time. Uh, well, at least for me anyhow. The Windmill Island Park is right next to the railroad which is up on a rather high fill.
The train was headed north/east with CN power. It was a “general manifest” type train and it was LONG. I did not bother to try and count the cars but I would bet it was well over 100 cars long.
Where in the world would this mystery train with CN power have been headed? Could the city of Grand Rapids alone generate that kind of freight business? I would be surprised. Grand Rapids was once home to a half-dozen or more large, automobile assembly plants but most if not all of them have closed.
So, where could the long train have been going? Anybody have any ideas?
The way carriers operate interline power swaps - one never knows which railroad’s train is being operated.
I believe CSX owns the track you are referring to. Who’s train you saw is open to question. It could be a CSX train operating with CN power. It could be a CN train operating on trackage rights. It could be a CP train operating on trackage rights.
I am not up to date on who has trackage rights over this area of CSX. Last I knew it was only CP. With CSX operating the CP trains from Detroit to Chicago. With PSR the situation may have changed.
It’s not uncommon for newcomers to the Deshler chat to wonder what railroads run through there. I’ve seen power from all of the Class 1’s in the lead numerous times.
A quick look at the map shows that trains through Holland could end up in Flint, and thus to Port Huron (and Canada) on CN, or in Plymouth, which could take them on into the Detroit area, or to points south (Toledo, et al).
If this was a CN move (still open to question, power notwithstanding), it could havee been a detour move avoiding a situation on their own line somewhere between Griffith and Lansing. Just speculation; I’ve seen nothing about a wreck.
Balt, CP no longer goes through Grand Rapids. They use the NS Elkhart line out of Chicago, switching to the former Wabash line from Butler, Indiana, to Detroit.
I think the CP went away in 2010. Only one eastbound train at the end, X500. The train that the OP saw was Q326. It used some CN horsepower payback units that have been wandering around of late.
Never had Michigan in my territory while we were all together in Jacksonville until 2008. When we were decentralized in 2008, never even heard of any goings on in Michigan.
The way horsepower hours and interline power use goes it is not that unusual for power of one company to be to be in the interline power account of another company. NS power to be operating on CSX but being carried as BNSF power because it was received from the BNSF. Following the horsepower hours can get very interesting.
Q326/Q327 are the daily trains running Barr Yard (Chicago) to Grand Rapids and are normally 100-150 cars…from the trains I have seen.
While the train terminates in Grand Rapids, it is possible freight will move on east on the line to Lansing, Plymouth and ultimately Detroit. Also, there is quite a bit of mineral type activity out of Michigan with transfer of freight to and from regional carriers.
These two trains are typically thru Porter, In in the morning to mid day.
edit: Another potential source of business on these trains are chemicals. Dow is located in Midland while not served by CSX would be interlined to them, probably at Plymouth.
Running north out of GR is (ex-CSX) Marquette Rail to Luddington and Manistee, both of which have large chemical industries based on salt minerals. There is also a paper mill on the line. I have seen a rather long train on that line with lots of tank and covered hoppers, and CSX contrils the interchange.
Was hoping you would jump in on this. What about Dow traffic. Would CSX be handling any of that or would that be interchanged to CN? I see lots of tank cars on CN thru NW Indiana.
Wyoming Yard in GR seems like a fairly big yard…from what I recall.
The only thing I know of that was big business in Grand Rapids was office furniture, outfits like Herman Miller and HON. I even went there once or twice - my former employer had a contract with an architectural signage company.
Most of the tank traffic you’re seeing on CN orginates in Sarnia, ON. Canada’s original Chemical Valley. Some originates at BASF’s Wyandotte facility. Quite a bit of the traffic out of Sarnia gets interchanged to UP. As far as Dow in Midland is concerned that’s handled by the Lake States Railway and Huron & Eastern. HE interchanges with CN at Durand, MI. Lake States Railway with CN at Flint. CSX at Plymouth.
Come to think of it, I’ve never seen auto racks operated on the Grand Rapids line. What I have seen were large, “hi cube” boxcars that were operated by Conrail out of the Elkhart, IN yard. That’s why I thought they were auto assembly plants but they could’ve more likely been auto parts factories. In the 1980s, I saw long trains of those types of cars on the line. That was the Conrail ex-NYC line, I think.
In Grand Rapids, Conrail had a yard on the east side of U.S. Route 131 which was often full of those “hi cube” cars. The last time I went by there around 2010 there weren’t any there any more. The yard was mostly empty and a few of the tracks had been removed.
So, evidently, they were not automobile assembly plants but some kind of parts that made heavy use of rail. That business appears to have been lost.
I would be interested to know if anyone else has any further information on this.
I think you may have solved the mystery of my “Mystery Train”. I think that CSX connects with at least two shortlines in the Grand Rapids area so much of the freight I spotted on this long train in Holland may have actually been destined for different locations around Michigan. Perhaps only a small part of it had its final destination as Grand Rapids proper.
However, the CN power suggests that it might’ve been a “run through” that originated somewhere on the former Wisonsin Central lines but, again, I don’t know this for sure. I’m speculating a bit here.
n012944 answered that part of the question. Nothing unusual going on here.
CN does send a manifest train to NS in Elkhart for interchange, this train can originate as far away as Winnipeg. I’m not aware of any such run-throughs with CSX, but I’m also not too familiar with our Midwest U.S. operations.
I would suggest you find a copy of the excellent book “Conrail Commodities” by Jeremy Taylor…in my opinion one of the best railroad books ever written.
Page 37 of the book has a photo of the Grand Rapids yard - Hughart Yard and train YCRG02 with 1 locomotive and 24 empty Conrail box cars. Hard to tell from the angle whether or not these are the high cube auto parts boxcars or not, but it is an impressive string of matched cars.
The description reads in part that the train “is leaving the former PRR yard southbound, enroute to CR’s major customer, a General Motors stamping plant. As for outbound business from Grand Rapids, it all goest ot Elkhart on an early morning GREL.”
I find those high cube autoparts boxcars interesting and am intrigued by the current day movements. NS runs a train daily from Elkhart to BRC in Chicago which usually has 3-6 of these cars. A few years ago when there was flooding, NS carried a few trains with close to 50 such boxcars to Chicago. My guess is that train normally went on the old Wabash from Detroit to St. Louis or perhaps Kansas City…but only a guess.