Looking for logical reasons...

[Cway]

Hello all,


This may be a little bit out of the area for this forum,but I thought that I\'d give it a shot...This is regarding Craigin Junction...You always hear about railroads trying to reduce travel times...Now,wouldn\'t it make sense for Canadian Pacific to have a few HOT freight trains travel down the Metra Milwaukee North Line then right past Mayfair go down the Craigin Line across Metra Milwaukee West Line down to Clearing Yard instead of having run-through trains go to Bensonville and then down to Clearing...
       I look around and I see wasted oppurtunities...I know that the rails are severed at Mayfair and at Craigin,but can\'t they be reconnected or once it\'s severed,that\'s it?

Cway

[TBurke]

Logically it would shorten the trip for CP Rail to run down the north-south Cragin Line.  
 
Practically speaking, the line is in bad shape with just a single customer left north of the cut.  To run fast, heavy duty freights would require a rebuild of the tracks and reinstalling the diamond where the Cragin Line crossed the Milwaukee Road\'s C&P or West Line.

Metra probably would not want more freight trains on its Northwest Line which gets busy during rush hour.

CP Rail may want to run all freights through Bensenville for whatever reason also.

Then there\'s the issue that UP owns the Cragin Line and may not want to sell it to a competitor let alone rebuilding it for them.

[SlowFreight]

Going via Bensenville instead of using the Cragin Sub is a difference of a few hours, typically.  Most railroads are looking for transit time reductions on the order of days, which is easily had by reconfiguring terminal operations rather than infrastructure.  If they can\'t achieve a 1-2 day reduction in transit time, most railroads will instead focus on achieving CONSISTENCY instead of duration, as most shippers are happy as long as transit times are predictable.  Customers don\'t want an average 5-day transit time if sometimes it\'s 3 days and sometimes 9.  They\'ll settle for a consistent 6-day transit if it\'s always 6 days.

Then, of course, there\'s the issue of cash to improve the line (insufficient rate of capital return).

CP may also have dreams of filling out Clearing-bound trains with Bensenville blocks that they drop on the way through.

[Ian]

Northbound trains would make sense as many southbounds get a crew change at B-Ville......the alignment would be interesting at mayfair......they might as well build a connector at Grayland Jct. instead.....although that would be a whole differnt project.....

The railroad that would benefit the most from this is the WSOR.  Their crazy back-up move at Cragin and then on to A-5 (Im still not too clear what the heck they do....) is pretty time consuming.....

-Ian