Nostalgia & History > Remember the Rock

32 years ago I shot the last westbound to leave Joliet IL on this fitting
dreary day. The second shot is the rear end of the last westbound passing
the old Center St. platform. Dan Tracy

---

---

Sad to see!!!

Even sadder if you were there in 1980.

A very acerbic scene that pretty well sums the dying days of the "Mighty Fine Line". No ditch lights on the ancient GP leading a short train on rickety
looking track down a trashy & unkempt right of way with one of those age-old things called a caboose. About a lifetime removed from the present day main
line RR technology. Thank you for the look back even though it is bitterly heart-breaking...

Lance

I wonder what that spot looks like today? Is there track there, or condos ann a baseball field?

lwilton Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I wonder what that spot looks like today? Is there
> track there, or condos ann a baseball field?


Isn't this Iowa Interstate main line now?

billio Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> lwilton Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I wonder what that spot looks like today? Is
> there
> > track there, or condos ann a baseball field?
>
>
> Isn't this Iowa Interstate main line now?

The building in the background of pix 1 is still there. Yes I believe Iowa Interstate in the operator now. Single track and looks worlds better.

This brings up another point.

If the Rock Island was so bad figuratively, Why is so much of it still around? Yes a lot of the Iowa branches are gone for sure, but most of the west main line is still in, with only bits and pieces missing here and there. Most of the Golden State route is still around. As is the Spine Line. The biggest piece that is gone is the Choctaw, but I'm not even sure of that.

This has been the way of a number of companies, couldn't survive, but still around.

J.

A fitting epilogue Dan. How many times I went by there on the trains to and from Silvis. And there were the commuters I worked and an ocassional run on the mainline passenger too. It was only 4 years but I worked every trip I could and got plenty of miles in. I even worked the Peoria Local and the Silvis Mine run.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

Well, that picture doesn't show things as bad as the engine terminal in Ft Worth on the last day.

J.Ferris Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This brings up another point.
>
> If the Rock Island was so bad figuratively, Why is
> so much of it still around?

I admit to knowing essentially nothing of the history of the Rock, but I have to wonder if it was 'bad', or simply driven out of business by the cost structure of railroading in the 1960s, as a goodly number of other roads also were.

Sorry, but if that track is west of Joliet it belongs to CSX. IAIS just has trackage rights over it. Their ownership doesn't start until MP 95 out around LaSalle. If that shot was taken east of Rockdale, IL, the tracks belong to Metra now. And it is very active and profitable for CSX. I don't know why the entire Rock Island had to be liquidated; the line west of Joliet is full of business such as chemicals, sand, etc. CSX has at least five locals working on the New Rock Sub every day, plus the road trains, J745 & J746, are usually monsters leaving and getting to Barr Yard. I think that traffic was always there; just don't know why the Rock couldn't handle it. Oh wait, we can handle it. Hhhm, just think if the UP had ever finalized their deal for the Rock.

Let's not forget the ineptitude of the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) as also being a factor in the long decline of the Rock Island. Remember, the UP wanted to merge/buy the Rock Island and then sell the southern routes to SP. It took 14 years for the ICC to finally say "OK" but by then the Rock Island was just a shell of it's 1960 self and UP terminated it's offer. The Rock Island then filed for bankruptcy; the rest is history.



Allen



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/31/12 22:52 by bradleymckay.

The Rock's route structure was generally described as going everywhere another railroad went already.

> If the Rock Island was so bad figuratively, Why is so much of it still around? ... This has been the way of a number of companies, couldn't survive, but still around.


The RI was like most other struggling RRs in that era, they had good lines, so-so lines & bad lines. Today, the valuable pieces still exist, the poor-performing lines are gone. The RI operated a network that was more "out of balance" in terms of traffic density than most. Something like 50% of their routes generated 90% of their traffic (& revenue). Needless to say, when the shutdown came, it was the traffic-generating lines that were picked up with the others being abandoned & scrapped. The 70 mile or so Joliet-Bureau corridor was one of the most profitable segments on the RI, which is why it was included in the Rock's Core proposal of the late '70s.

Take care,

Mark

lwilton Wrote:

> I admit to knowing essentially nothing of the
> history of the Rock, but I have to wonder if it
> was 'bad', or simply driven out of business by the
> cost structure of railroading in the 1960s, as a
> goodly number of other roads also were.

I've always said that if the RI could've held on 5 more years they'd have made it on their own. Getting out from under the costs of RRing in that era would've done the same thing for RI that it did for other RRs, they just didn't last long enough to prove it.

Andy

bradleymckay Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Let's not forget the ineptitude of the ICC
> (Interstate Commerce Commission) as also being a
> factor in the long decline of the Rock Island.
> Remember, the UP wanted to merge/buy the Rock
> Island and then sell the southern routes to SP.

I'm not going to claim the ICC wasn't inept (I was only a child during the RI bankruptcy years), but I have to say that I don't think the UP merger would've worked in the long run, at least on the overland route. There is no way RI's line across Iowa could handle the traffic UP has in that corridor now, so merging with RI wouldn't have been the end of UP's Chicago connection problems. I've heard from what I consider a reliable source that the merger was cooked up by directors in New York, but the operating people in Omaha wanted nothing to do with it, and instead cast their lot with the CNW.

I personally am glad that the merger didn't work, since we now have the Iowa Interstate. UP may run lots of trains but is boring, and I suspect the first thing they'd have done would be to run off all the local business, which is one of the most interesting things about IAIS.

The "Spine Line" does seem to be a good fit with UP's post merger system.

Can someone remind me of the current status of RI's former Gulf route that UP at one time ran under the Oklahoma-Kansas-Texas name? Is there much traffic on that route now? Under the original merger plan I don't believe that route was going to stay with UP.

Great pictures Dan (the condition of the EB main is telling), and interesting discussion by all.

Andy

Mergers were a factor in determining which lines remained intact end-to-end. If the Seaboard Air Line had gone into the Southern instead of the ACL 45 years ago, you'd see a different configuration of main lines in the southeast today. That said, the most important factor is online customers of significant volume -- although that doesn't necessarily guarantee that a line will be preserved end-to-end.

mamfahr Wrote:

> > If the Rock Island was so bad figuratively, Why
> is so much of it still around? ..................

That is a glaring fact that doesn't seem to have a readily visible answer. With the exception of Des Moines, IA the Rock Island had at least 1 and in many cases multiple major RR's to compete with in most of their territories. So they had intense competition for traffic that hit them pretty hard. But 30+ years later most of the mains are still around, and doing well. Even so, while personally hating politics I have been forced to confront politically driven situations enough to give my opinion that the Rock Island's demise was fueled more from "behind the scenes". That would at least partially explain to me why so much of the Rock Island's main line structure is still around and is very much healthy. I have this mental image of the 70's era: It shows a few Buzzard-looking RR execs all hanging around with drooling fangs & huge meat cleavers ready to greedily chop up the Rock Island map. I'm sure the real answer runs deeper & is way more complex that that, but that's just the way it looked to me.

Lance

Also wasnt the trustee asking for a ton of money for the existing route structure. I believe this was driven by the Crown interests that thought could get dollar for dollar for their investment.

AndyBrown Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I personally am glad that the merger didn't work,
> since we now have the Iowa Interstate.
>
> Andy

Forget the Iowa Interstate, CNW and UP for a minute and think about how an earlier merger approval would have effected the SP. If SP had been able to get it's hands on the Golden State Route, via UP, when SP was at it's operational peak (before 1974) it might still be around. SP always wanted a direct route to Kansas City. UP's termination of the Rock Island merger burned SP, which is one of the reasons why then SP Chairman Ben Biaggini became almost obsessed with buying the Golden State Route from the Rock Island. He finally did buy it for cheap ($57 million) but in the post-Staggers world competition from both UP and Santa Fe kept freight rates in check and SP probably did not see nearly as fast a return on it's investment compared to pre-Staggers.

You could also probably say the same thing about the Santa Fe. Had the UP/RI merger gone through the Santa Fe would have had the Choctaw Route...


Allen