Eastern Railroad Discussion > DREI this Weekend

This past Sunday, I was travelling back home to Decatur from Indy, and decided to take the long way home in hopes of catching the Decatur & Eastern Illinois RR (DREI) road train. Normally, they run east out of Decatur on Sunday morning, but after texting the engineer, I learned they were building their train near Paris, IL to head west.

I caught up with the train at Horace, IL (just 10 miles north of Paris) as they were doing some switching. This video is of the road train once they finally left Horace to head to Decatur in the early afternoon.

WAMX 4234 (SD-40) and 2 leased geeps lead 76 cars (4 loads, 72 empties) westbound.
Scenes are as follows:
   - Just south of the little neighborhood of Edgar, IL (entire train shown). The track from Chrisman south to Paris is all jointed rail, with welded rail beginning in Chrisman to Decatur.  
   - Next is a mile east of Metcalf, where the DREI crosses the Eastern Illinois RR. The signal shown in the clip is the diamond approach signal.
   - After crossing the diamond, the train passes through the small town of Hume. The ADM elevator is by far the largest structure of the town.
   - As the clounds get thick, the train passes under the last bit of sunlight as it crosses highway 49 (a few miles west of Hume). 
   - Final scene is passing the ADM grain elevator at Newman, IL.

I went on ahead of the train to Tuscola (another 15ish miles west) to wait for the train to catch it going across the CN diamond, but after waiting 45 minutes, decided to head on home, as it was getting late, and the sun was now completely cloud-covered.
   -Caleb

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I'll back-track a little for this video.

My first encounter of the morning was getting to Horace, just in time to hear a train horn heading south towards Paris. Once reaching Paris, I found the engineer I had texted on a single GP-38 going back to the Paris yard. Video shows the locomotive heading through town to the yard. After shutting the unit down at the yard, the crew fires up the two ex-NS gp-38's to take back to horace to finish building their train and head west. As they are running the units down the wye in Paris, I heard them telling train 301 (Terre Haute to Paris) that they were clear, so I zipped over to the east side of town in time to catch that road train coming into town. By now, the two light engines had quite a head start on the way back to Horace, but the track between Paris and Horace is the worst on the DREI system. Last year, this stretch of track was 10 mph, but this spring some major MOW work was done, and by the time it took them to get to Horace, I'd say the track must be good for 20 mph now.

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Once in Horace, the two geeps meet up with the parked SD-40 waiting in the small yard outside a large grain complex. Normally the road train is assembled in Paris, but the DREI is experiencing some locomotive failures, and with two of the normal geeps down for the count, they've had to turn to the newly rebuilt SD-40 to lend a hand on the road train (much to the delight of my engineer friend on the train this day). Poor track conditions prevent 6-axle units from travelling the final 10 miles into Paris. Hopefully the DREI will be able to further upgrade this segment in the coming years.

Normally, this SD-40 is stationed at the Decatur yard to handle the large volume of traffic between ADM and the CN. Today, the road train was prepared on all 4 tracks in the small Horace yard, requiring the crew to quadruple their train before they could depart. This gave me some good opportunities to use my drone to capture some footage. The 76 car train seems to be about the maximum that this little yard can handle. 

Photo is an overview of this yard taken with my drone.

Thanks for watching!
  -Caleb



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/19 06:35 by mtzctrain.

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