Eastern Railroad Discussion > CSX Cleveland Terminal sub?

There's a stretch of railroad that I've been curious about for a while now.
Back in the day before Conrail was split up, the Chicago Line was all one railroad thru Cleveland and went straight thru downtown with most thru-traffic going this way to Berea and points west. Nowadays there seems to be a small segment of the Chicago Line between the Cleveland Amtrak station and CSX's Collinwood Yard that sits nearly dormant. As far as I'm aware of, Amtrak 49 and 48 are the only regular users of this stretch of railroad nowadays, but I was also told that CSX locals and a very small amount of CSX trains running via NS to Berea run this way as well. Is this true? And what is the overall activity of the Chicago Line between Collinwood and the CLE Amtrak station these days?

I think you are accurate about this segment of track.  Besides the daily Amtrak, CSX operates an occasional local for some local industries.  It was formerly double track.  

A couple years ago they were running an auto rack with a single engine from Collinwood to Cleveland on a frequent basis, but I never knew what that was about. Seemed to be in the evening.

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Yes, Amtrak 48 and 49 are the only regular trains on this section- although 29 and 30 will use a short section of the former NYC between CP 181 and the station/DB. NS owns and maintains the line from DB to CP 181, CSX from the WAS CP 181 to Collinwood. CSX runs an as needed local from Collinwood, used mostly to interchange with the CHB (Cleveland Harbor Belt) on 44 Industrial (the side track next to the main). At times that CSX local will venture west of DB (drawbridge) one train length to make moves. As mentioned there use to be a multilevel train that came out of Collinwood (often with NS crews) and went west to, IIRC, the mixing center in Fostoria. There was no comparable eastbound move. Back in the day the Ringling trains would use this section and store their train east of CP 181 in the remains of the yard there. The only other current move I can think of might be rail test moves (Sperry).

Roger Durfee
Akron, OH