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(erielack) Freight Trains Today

I was watching the PBS Newshour on Thursday night getting a fix on the stuff going on in Iran, and they ran an interesting report about NIMBY reactions to the CN takeover of the EJ&E.  Not that NIMBY is anything new or unique these days, but the report had some interesting footage of CN and BNSF trains around Chicagoland.  No real EL relevance, other than the tangential fact that the former EL/EJE/GT diamond in Griffith, Ind. will be an important connection point in CN's plan to keep freights away from downtown by using the EJE.  

However, the train shots in this report made me ponder another reason why I miss the EL so much (and you probably do too).  The action footage basically showed three kinds of freights:  coal/hopper runs, double-stack intermodal runs, and mixed freights consisting mainly of large tank cars.  That could cover perhaps 80% of freight traffic these days.  Back in the 60s and 70s, it seemed like every freight run was different and distinctive; 90 had its big auto parts cars (and stock cars, if you go back to the early 60s), TC2 / BC2 had a lot of 40 foot boxcars (paper from Canada) and maybe some autoracks for Jersey City, 74 had reefers, 100 had the boxcar block ahead of its TOFC, PO98 would be a mix of anything and everything, CS9 and PN98 might have some cement covered hoppers . . .  and of course we had three types of cabeese to watch for at the tail end, versus a blinking FRED today.

You had a lot more variety in freight car consists, with all the fallen flags still flying.  Even the intermodal runs had a variety of interesting trailers from both RR's and trucking companies (of course, the UPS trains could be a bit monotonous).  Throw in the locals, the coal trains, switchers puttering around with a few cars in urban settings, work trains, and it was never boring -- at least when the trains were running.  Today, freight density is quite high on the remaining main lines, but variety is quite low.  

As to the town of Barrington, IL looking for sympathy because the CN is going to run up to 20 freights a day across its 4 or 5 grade crossings, well, you've got to wonder how life ever got on in places like Dover, NJ, E. Stroudsburg, PA and Marion, IL (recalling Keith Krimich's recent comments about NE74 refueling at the station).  Somehow it did.

Here's the Newshour report link:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/transportation/jan-june09/railroad_06-18.html

Jim Gerofsky

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