Eastern Railroad Discussion > INRD on the Tulip Trestle

Traffic is light these days on the Indiana Rail Road mainly because of reduced coal shipments--usually four or five trains a day.  So when I visited the Tulip Trestle in southern Indiana, I really didn't expect to see a train.  The trestle is worth a trip even without a train; it's an amazing structure both in terms of its length and height.  But I got lucky, and an INRD train rumbled across it while I was there.  Two SD9043MAC units, one of them in the Silver Anniversary scheme, headed the train which was two-thirds containers and the rest general merchandise.  INRD and CN have collaborated on an intermodal project whereby CN drops off containers at the ex-IC connection and INRD hauls them to a new intermodal terminal in Indy.  From what I hear, it's working out well for both roads.

My only gripe is that foliage needs to be cut back.  It makes it impossible to get a good view of the entire length of the trestle.

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It's never really been more than 4-5 trains a day, so about the status quo.   About how many containers were aboard?  

INRD sure times this container business right.  With coal down and them losing what I believe to be good boxcar traffic out of Bloomington, hopefully the container traffic can keep them in the black.

P Wrote:
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> It's never really been more than 4-5 trains a day,
> so about the status quo.   About how many
> containers were aboard?  
>
> INRD sure times this container business right.
>  With coal down and them losing what I believe to
> be good boxcar traffic out of Bloomington,
> hopefully the container traffic can keep them in
> the black.

Well, I don't follow INRD as much as others, but a guy I know who works there once told me that 6 or 7 a day was not uncommon.

Yes, the container traffic is partly making up for the loss of coal revenue, but I'm told the closure of the GE appliance plant in Bloomington won't have a big impact. 

I didn't count the cars but an educated guess would be 45-50 containers.

Yes growth does present its problems at this trestle. Looks like a drone photo is the only way to get a decent picture.
John

The trestle is a great place to take photos with the right kind of light and Fall colors.

John Troxler

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It is hard to catch a daylight movement these days.  Before the loss of the coal traffic, there could be some days with 6 or 7 movements, as the IPL trains ussually ran 6 days a week, and could catch in daylight in the summer, and factor in for a few years the  weekly coal trains for the Perry K plant in downtown Indy, plus a weekly coal train to Richmond P&L.  Now, you have the SAHW and HWSA manifest trains, plus the Merom rock trains running at night.

Gerald Davenport