Eastern Railroad Discussion > CSX Fort Wayne Line Sold

I was told today by fellow co workers the line will be sold to a independant shortline as of 7-1-04. Since the track department workers are in the same seniority district, as the B&O line West of Willard. The bumping games will get very serious. Can anyone confirm this? I do know the line was for sale.

My bet would be that ether I&O/RA or RJ Corman got it.

RJ Corman was hi-railing it earlier this past month.

Andrew

ns-dash8 Wrote:
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> My bet would be that ether I&O/RA or RJ Corman
> got it.
>
> RJ Corman was hi-railing it earlier this past
> month.
>
> Andrew
>

Those don't sound very "independant" to me.

-CJ/B

If this is indeed true, will NS maintain trackage rights West of Crestline? Also, is this a prudent cost cutting effort by CSX? I only ask this because in the past so many lines were sold off or abandoned by ALL roads only to appear to haunt them 5, 10 or 20 years later.
Thanks
RichS.

I too heard it was for sale...but won't be to NS or CN. (How can they stop them anyway?)

WLE, RJC, IO, RailAmerica are among the prospects.

I believe it is only Fort Wayne to Crestline, not Chicago to Fort Wayne, can I get a confirm on that?

Tony

We just have to wait and see. But be aware, April 1st is Thursday ;-)

I hope it is WLE. It would give them an entrance to Chicago and a chance for significant growth.

What exactly do NS and CSX put over this routing currently, anyways? And how did CR use it to supplement the x-NYC into Chicago? What about track condition and capability?

Like so many other things, a shame the former PRR is no longer a truly complete railroad west of the mountains...

I could be dead wrong about this, but I don't see why CSX would want to get rid of the Lima OH-Columbia City IN segment and give up the considerable Central Soya (Decatur IN) and Steel Dynamics (Columbia City) business. Columbia City to Chicago I could see, although I'm not sure why anyone would want it. Lima east, I can't speak for.

cr6399 Wrote:
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> What exactly do NS and CSX put over this routing
> currently, anyways? And how did CR use it to
> supplement the x-NYC into Chicago? What about
> track condition and capability?
>
East of Fort Wayne, CSX runs only locals and the occasional grain train, while NS uses it intermittently for trailer trains to avoid congestion on the ex-NYC.

When I moved out here in 1993, CR was on the verge of ripping the PRR up east of Lima, probably leaving just bits and pieces between there and Upper Sandusky. But just short of that happening, CR bought into Triple Crown, and the decision was made to establish a new RoadRailer terminal at Crestline and run the Fort Wayne-Pittsburgh-New Jersey RoadRailers (and later a connecting Crestline-Rochester, NY pair) via the ex-PRR east of Fort Wayne. Those trains lasted until the end of Conrail, but once NS got its half of Triple Crown back along with access to the ex-NYC west of Cleveland, it built yet another new RoadRailer terminal, in Sandusky, and put the Pittsburgh trains back on the NKP between Fort Wayne and Bellevue.

Other than the Triple Crowns and various locals, Conrail did not run any scheduled trains over the PRR between Fort Wayne and Crestline during its final six years of existence, and west of Fort Wayne there were symbol freights only as far west as Warsaw, where trains ELFW/FWEL got onto the ex-NYC Marion Branch to/from Goshen. In the Valparaiso area, a long stretch was taken out of service entirely, before being sold/leased to NS for use as a second main track (it paralleled the NKP main). There were occasional grain trains, and once in a while unit trains of tank cars for Procter & Gamble running from the east side of Lima down to Cincinnati (they ran around at Crestline and went down the Burt Line thru Columbus).

There might even have been a few derailment detours, though I can't cite any examples and think most such trains avoided the PRR because it was slow and there weren't very many qualified crews available. Once the passenger trains came off in 1990, Conrail deactivated the signal system, except at junctions.

junctiontower Wrote:
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> I could be dead wrong about this, but I don't see
> why CSX would want to get rid of the Lima
> OH-Columbia City IN segment and give up the
> considerable Central Soya (Decatur IN) and Steel
> Dynamics (Columbia City) business. Columbia City
> to Chicago I could see, although I'm not sure why
> anyone would want it. Lima east, I can't speak
> for.

Steel Dynamics is supposed to be planning on building an Iron Nugget plant to feed their furnaces with
high-grade iron so they can compete with the integrated steel makers. They would be receiving on the order of 1 to 1.25 million tons per year of Taconite concentrate from the Mesabi Range in Northern Minnesota. Even if it is sent via ship to Toledo or some other lower lakes port it would still need rail haul to their mill. To produce these Iron Nuggets the process would require about 800,000 tons of high grade coal as well. So Steel Dynamics should be generating a lot more traffic in 2-3 years.

There isn't much going on west of Ft Wayne either. Last I heard, they were only
running a pair of trains 3 times a week. When it was Conrail, it was virtually
abandoned west of Warsaw, maybe some local service, but nothing west of the GTW
diamond in Valparaiso IN, because at one point, the diamond was actually removed
for awhile. After NS took over, they ran it as far west as Hobart (where it
parallels their own line, between Valpo and Hobart), built a connection at Valpo,
and another one at Hobart, and used it as an extended passing siding. West of
Hobart it sat unused until the Conrail split. CSX rehabbed it west of Hobart all
the way to Clark Jct, but only used it as far as Tolleston (where it connects to
the Porter Branch, which CSX also got) and then used the Porter Branch/IHB main into
Chicago.

In referencing the detour situation, I can only think of three instances where the Fort Wayne was utilized. I was friends with one of the block operators at NS(Lima), and there were two times in going up there in which there were trains out while I was in the tower-both times, I believe, were Sandusky Bay accidents. One train which I lined up Eastbound was ELPI. I don't have the exact dates for either time(about12-13 years ago). It was not utilized much, because of no qualified crews and no real passing sidings, esentially a one-way railroad.
Not to nitpick, but the Ft. Wayne was never CTC-it went straight from rule 251 territory to APB. I have seen where as far back as 1961 it was planned to install CTC, but obviously this did not happen. Around 1992 or so, the FT. Wayne was under the control of the Pittsburgh Dispatcher, and NS(Lima) had indicator lights on the machine from Dunkirk to Adams, but did not control all that territory-they would get Form D's from Pittsburgh via Block Phone and relay them, as it was easier to get ahold of the operator rather than the Dispatcher, and it gave the operator something to do-for sitting on an interlocking with three railroads in the plant, it was awfully dead, as anyone who is familiar with Lima well knows.

It is my understanding that the SDI plant that would be getting the Iron Nugget facility is the one near Butler, on NS's ex-Wabash main, not the one near Columbia City. I don't know this for a fact.

As for CTC, someone may have to check this in an employee timetable for me, but through the late '80s up until 1991 when Amtrak's Broadway and Captiol Limiteds were evicted, from Fort Wayne (Mike interlocking) westward there was a Traffic Control system in place, though it did not involve any controlled sidings as a traditional CTC system does. I grew up in Columbia City, and most mornings I'd hear 41 and/or 29 receive a Form D from the Kankakee Line DS to operated from Adams to Mike, only. And in Columbia City itself, what appeared to be just another block signal was really a control point, CP Vandale (boy, I wish I had one of the signs that used to stand there!).

~~Pete