My Community
Chicago Switching => General Discussion => Topic started by: D. Kaniuk on May 06, 2009, 02:44:40 PM
-
Had to pick up pet supplies, so went to the Petco on Clybourn. On the Lakewood branch, between Belden and Webster, were 4 empty gondolas.
(date:5/6/2009 at noon). Did a check and the CT switcher was still in the North Ave yards, however, the ILSX service truck was next to the switcher. A quick check, no cars at Big Bay Lumber.
Did get pictures of the gondolas, go to:
http://www.dhke.com/rrus/ct/ct05062009.html
-doug
-
Doug:
Very cool. Thanks for posting them so quickly.
Three theories on why they stored these gondolas so far north:
-CTR ran out of space near General Iron Industries
-CTR is asserting their rights to the ROW north of Clybourn with a use it or lose it type attitude.
-CTR is storing the cars for someone else on this unused track given the slump in scrap metal prices, meaning there might be more gondolas out there than demand for their services.
-
You beat me!! This was last night...
(http://www.chucksphotospot.com/temp/CTRRLW091.jpg)
(http://www.chucksphotospot.com/temp/CTRRLW092.jpg)
(http://www.chucksphotospot.com/temp/CTRRLW093.jpg)
-=Chuck=-
Mail: chuckjanda(at)hotmail.com
Home: http://www.chucksphotospot.com
-
All three would be plausible and maybe all three true, except that the reporting marks AOK belong to the Arkansas - Oklahoma Railroad. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_and_Oklahoma_Railroad
I rather doubt the short line would be storing cars up in Chicago. Any time CTR can use one of the inactive lines helps nail down its property rights, though, has got to make its lawyers happy. And ordered cars do pile up sometimes. I recall reading that one Class I was limiting the number of cars it would store for a customer in its yards to three times the customer\'s siding capacity. The downside of stashing backed up cars on the Lakewood line might be potential liability issues. (If I were a neighborhood kid, it would be very difficult to restrain myself from climbing all over the cars.)
be well,
bob roman
quote:
Originally posted by TBurke
Doug:
Very cool. Thanks for posting them so quickly.
Three theories on why they stored these gondolas so far north:
-CTR ran out of space near General Iron Industries
-CTR is asserting their rights to the ROW north of Clybourn with a use it or lose it type attitude.
-CTR is storing the cars for someone else on this unused track given the slump in scrap metal prices, meaning there might be more gondolas out there than demand for their services.
-
The land under the tracks on the C&E Line north of Clybourn belonged to the Chicago Milwaukee Corporation (CMC), a holding company. When CMC sold the Milwaukee Road railroad subsidiary to the Soo Line in 1985 CMC retained the underlying land and allowed the Soo Line to operate over it via an easement on the C&E Line on Chicago\'s North Side.
CMC eventually became CMC Heartland, then Heartland Partners. Its primary business was the liquidation and/or redevelopment of former railroad property including timber rights out west, the former freight yards in the River West area now occupied by condos, the former Milwaukee Road yard and shop facilities east of where Miller Park now stands in downtown Milwaukee, and more. Proceeds were paid in the form of dividends to CMC shareholders and later succesor Heartland partners.
In 2007 Heartland sold the last of its assets and itself ceased to exist. The land under the tracks in this stretch by Belden belongs to whatever investment group bought this piece of land from Heartland with most probably future development in mind. I would have to go back to the original SEC filings to see who bought this narrow corridor of land. Chicago Terminal Railroad (CTR) operates over it by virtue of the easement it obtained when taking over from CN/Soo Line unless it also purchased the land in a separate transaction which seems unlikely.
Its value for development into residential or retail use is crimped by the fact that an active rail line runs through it, plus the current recession.
The trickier part is the section on Lakewood north of Wrightwood which operates on a city street by virtue of a franchise agreement that goes back to the 1887 and a predecessor company of the C&E. Upon abandonment the City of Chicago retakes possession. This came up in 2002 when the Tribune Company sought to extend Wrigley Field west across the former Milwaukee Road ROW on land it thought it had acquired in 1982 from the railroad. The City of Chicago asserted its rights to this strip of land and the Tribune had to pay a second time, this time to the city, for the same land.
The photos show the former southbound main and a siding emerging once again from underneath the pavement. The townhomes on the east are on the site of the former Richardson Chemical plant, a rail-served customer through at least 1979.
-
It\'s those easements that benefit most from periodic watering, yes?
In any case, I was on the Fullerton bus on Monday, 5/11 around 9:30 AM, and the gondolas were still there. It was a quick glimpse, from a distance, from the bus (the driver did stop for the rail crossing; they don\'t always).
be well,
bob roman
-
Good point, and by the end of summer that stretch where the gondolas are gets rather overgrown with grass and weeds to the point where the rails are hard to make out from a distance.
CMC sold the land underneath the tracks in the other areas too, not just this strip by Belden, where the rails did not travel down city streets, leaving in place easements for trains.
-
There is a string of 9-10 cars with the same markings on one of the tracks next to Sipi Metals. They have been there for at least 3 weeks now. The CTR must be using the other track to go around them when they are making deliveries to Finkl, General Iron, and Big Bay.
-
I travel on Metra by the North Avenue yard every day. I have not seen the CTR engine moved in weeks. Occasionally it is running though. They must start it occasionaly to keep it in good operating condition.
As best as I can tell there also seems to be only one UP Geep working the North Avenue yard these days. A couple years ago there were three at times.
-
I was out checking on Monday (5/11) and Yesterday (5/14). On Monday, there was a box car delivered to BIg Bay, At 3:00pm, the switcher was just moving off the bridge over the river and returning to North Ave yard. On Thursday, Big Bay was still unloading the box car.
-
I passed the Rolling Mill Yard (the original name for the small yard between Sipi Metals and the Kennedy Expressway when it was an interchange point between the Milwaukee Road and C&NW) and those gondolas labeled for AOK were still there. One has to wonder if CTR is indeed storing them.
-
I\'m beginning to like that idea also. Aside from the unreasonable dwell time, two other things got my attention.
One was that I found, on Thursday, that CN\'s Wisconsin Central line along the Eisenhower has been filled with an apparently endless string of empty TTX well cars. By their rusted wheels, it didn\'t look as though they had moved for several days at least. I\'ve seen freight trains parked there often enough, but this looked like stored equipment. The CSX line is free but they have some older covered hoppers stashed on the siding built for hauling contaminated soil from that Oak Park park.
The other is that Arkansas-Oklahoma seems to have quite an inventory of rolling stock for a 74 mile pike, including some well cars! Also of interest: AOK is one of those short lines that is sentimental about its Rock Island heritage. They seem to use a modified RI nameplate rather more than Iowa Interstate does.
And it\'s purely fancy on my part, but when I\'ve seen CTR with what seems to be an outbound load, it\'s been in a gondola. Be right handy if they could simply grab one of those AOKs.
be well,
bob roman
quote:
Originally posted by TBurke
I passed the Rolling Mill Yard (the original name for the small yard between Sipi Metals and the Kennedy Expressway when it was an interchange point between the Milwaukee Road and C&NW) and those gondolas labeled for AOK were still there. One has to wonder if CTR is indeed storing them.
-
Is it possible that Finkl is finally closing and these are for the cleanup?
-=Chuck=-
Mail: chuckjanda(at)hotmail.com
Home: http://www.chucksphotospot.com
-
I too noticed that endless string of flatcars along the Eisenhower Expressway recently and also assumed they are being stored...
Some railroads like the Kankakee, Beaverville, & Southern (KBS) make money by storing unused freight cars for other railroads which they stuff onto every possible siding, spur, and other unused piece of track.
At least the stored gondolas on the C&E North Line near Belden serve to remind area residents that this stretch of track is still active and part of the national rail system!
I checked Chicago Terminal\'s parent company Iowa Pacific\'s website to see if AOK was part of their collection of shortlines and apparently it is not.
-
Yes, and stored railcars mean that at least one more trip will occur at some point on the line!
-
Was on the Fullerton bus Friday, May 29, FYI: the gondolas were still there.
be well,
bob roman
-
for all that care...I headed out today to see if teh CTM was going to move the generator that has been sitting over at North Ave Yard for the past couple days...no such luck on that front as it is hooked up to the cut of cars for tonites YPR77....
BUT
they did in fact move more gons onto the Lakewood Branch for stoarge...I\'ll post pics and more details shortly...in fact the crew came and talked with me and asked me to post and tell y\'all that the cars are indeed for storage and nothing more....
-
a couple of pictures posted here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/47783317@N00/
-
Ian:
Great candid photos!
When did you take them? I was down there around 10AM then had to take off. I noticed that the gondolas already there had a fresh coat of graffiti on them.
The neighbors in those townhomes probably love looking out onto rusted and graffiti covered freight cars from their balconies.
Tom
-
There is something in me that just loves seeing this!!!
Great shots, thanks for sharing!
-=Chuck=-
Mail: chuckjanda(at)hotmail.com
Home: http://www.chucksphotospot.com
-
the timestamps on my photos say around the 1 o\'clock hour...I drove down there around noon or so and there was no crew on the switcher and it was shut down in fact in the holding spot at General Iron Industries...I was going to leave but I decided to grab lunch and not even five minutes after finishing up eating I hear the single chime horn blaring away....
pretty lucky....
-
As of Saturday 6/20/09 there are two gondolas at the old Peerless site, according to another post they were put there Thursday.
(http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee40/jaketorino/IMG00340.jpg)
(http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee40/jaketorino/IMG00341.jpg)
The pickup in the bottom pic belongs to streets & san. putting up no parking movie location 6/22-6/23 signs on the entire block.
I don\'t know how they moved the cars as the switch at Peerless is now clogged with asphalt
(http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee40/jaketorino/IMG00342.jpg)
-
Last summer a Chicago Terminal employee used a long crowbar on the switch to pry the rails open to get the coach and locomotive out of the spur. It would be challenge given that big glob of asphalt there now.