Eastern Railroad Discussion > Last of the NS/Arcelor-Mittal Bottle Trains(?)

I may have caught the last NS bottle train last Friday, 6/20/2025.  Other obligations prevented me from spending time by the tracks after work on Thursday, 6/19 but a Facebook post indicated there might be a move or two after the 19th. 
So after sitting by the IHB mainline in Hammond, IN for a while after work Friday afternoon, I was rewarded with NS 5322 pulling the empties towards the Arcleor-Mittal furnaces at East Chicago, IN. What was interesting and why I think this might be the last train was the three gondolas and three covered hoppers that had served as buffer cars for the three sets of bottle cars that shuttled between East Chicago and Riverdale, IL. 
Leaving Hammond, I went to intercept the train as it headed north on the IHB Kankakee Line and successfully fot it at the 148th Street crossing. 
I headed north on Kennedy Drive and after waiting for a southbound NS train of gondolas to clear workes my way up to CP 101. This would be as far as I went as the bottle train stoppes to wait for no leas than three southbound trains. The first was an IHB transfer led by 5729 and 5627 in the new paint scheme. 

That was it for me as I had plans for dinner with the wife and friends at 7 and it was already 5:10 with a drive on the notorious Tri-Stae Tollway ahead of me. 

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Buffer cars on the end of the train at Hammond, IN. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/25 18:38 by kevink.

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Thanks for catching that.
I believe there is still a hot billet train betrween Harrisburg and the Lehigh Heavy forge in Bethlehem. Not hot bottles but anther interesting remnant of the huge former steel indutries in the U.S.
These are hot ingots in insulated cars. I'm not sure of where these originate but the Lehigh Heavy Forge is the last functioning portion of the former Bethlehem Steel Corporation. So sad
Gonut

And some of them are still friction bearings.

Sam

Is there still a bottle train in operation in East St Louis, IL?
JB

3rdswitch Wrote:
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> Is there still a bottle train in operation in East
> St Louis, IL?
> JB

No, BFs idled there a couple of years ago, although there's talk of Suncoke taking them over and restarting them. Nothing final yet...

JG



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/25 21:17 by jgilmore.

Was there some kind of power-sharing deal for these moves, or did NS operate them over the Indiana Harbor Belt?  And if NS ran them on the IHB, why?

Super coverage of this historic event.
Bob

Trainhand Wrote:
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> And some of them are still friction bearings.
>
> Sam

I daresay converted to roller bearings.....there were/are ways to retrofit roller bearing axles to plain bearing trucks leaving the journal boxes in places. nobody wants the work of maintaining plain bearings anymore. 

I have great memories of bottle trains traveling through Whiting, IN, on the EJE (along the lakeshore). If you were stopped at a grade crossing for one of the trains, you could even feel the heat inside your car. 

I'm not sure when those trains stopped running. Youngstown once had blast furnaces in South Chicago (shut down in the '60s before I started working at YST) which dispatched bottle trains to the mill in E. Chicago. bit I believe that I saw bottle trains on the J after that.

There were other mills on the south side as well, no long closed. . These also provided slag for an interesting slag dumping facility that was located just west of the Hammond/Whiting Amtrak station. I remember the cars being pushed by a steam loco of the "Indian Hill and Iron Range," which was owned by the Bairstow Company, which was a major supplier of slag. (Their dump site is now a municipal golf course.) 

Perhaps others can provide more info. This certainly was an interesting facet of railroading. 

engineerinvirginia Wrote:
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> I daresay converted to roller bearings.....there
> were/are ways to retrofit roller bearing axles to
> plain bearing trucks leaving the journal boxes in
> places. nobody wants the work of maintaining plain
> bearings anymore. 

That's useful information. I recall (or at least think I did) that one or the other of the Chicago Short Line locomotives appeared to still have the journal bearing axles. 

The only other apparent "friction bearing" equipment I remember seeing (a few years ago) were some ancient gondolas at an East Chicago steel plant. I'm fairly sure they never left the property.
 

pennsy3750 Wrote:
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> Was there some kind of power-sharing deal for
> these moves, or did NS operate them over the
> Indiana Harbor Belt?  And if NS ran them on the
> IHB, why?

Because NS does not operate any trackage from the blast furnaces in East Chi to the Riverdale plant.  Until about six months ago, NS used its own trackage at Dolton--a short piece of the old Panhandle--that it accessed from the IHB.  But now that track has been removed. and the mill can only be reached using the parallel CSX main at Dolton.  Inbound trains from the BFs now cross over from IHB to CSX about a mile east of Dolton to access the plant.

So you're probably wondering why it's a NS train?  Way back in the old days when the Panhandle was still there and the trains came from the now defunct Acme plant, the train used NS trackage for most of the distance.

 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/25 09:13 by calumet.

Great coverage - thank you. I had thoughts of making the drive down to the area from southwestern Michigan to catch the bottle train one last time, but other things intervened - so I especially appreciate the coverage.

I'll bet the guys on that IHB train in your fine video "felt the heat" as they rolled by those bottle cars - even empty they really radiated the heat. A memory for them of the operation and perhaps the last one of its kind - although perhaps not the memory they would have wished.

As to operations for United States Steel's Granite City Works at Granite City, Ill. near St. Louis, yes as "jgilmore" stated, no bottle trains there recently. It would be very interesting to see some kind of operation of the sort start in relation to the big, modern Suncoke Energy coke plant across Hwy. 203 from the Ironmaking Dept. and blast furnaces. Hopefully the recent acquisition of USS by Nippon Steel will put more life back into the Granite City facility. Interestingly, at Granite City until fairly recently, big slag ladles were moved from the Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) steelmaking shop to the slag dump site, using large rubber-tired carrier vehicles. They crossed E. 20th St., a fairly busy public roadway, at grade just outside the BOF Shop. Just flashers and gates there, like a railroad crossing, to stop traffic as one of those those huge ladles filled with still very hot molten slag drove across. I've been stopped by one of the ladle-carriers more than a few times, and honestly it was more unnerving than watching one of those bottle trains pass by standing at trackside at Dolton or East Chicago.

As for other "hot" trains, I believe there is also still a unit hot slab train operating on CSX's Toledo Sub southward to the Cincinnati area. Special rack-type cars, almost like the old log carriers but shorter, with the slabs stacked in the middle between vertical forks,  four or five slabs high. Prominently placarded 'HOT" on the sides. I've seen and photographed this movement from AK Steel at Dearborn, Mich (next to the Ford Rouge Complex) a couple of times previously, and you could feel the warmth radiating from those slabs. Not like that bottle train in Chicago, but warm enough to notice. A video showing this train at Deshler, Ohio about a year ago - you may have to copy and paste the URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-mSts-XAyU

Another end arriving to a memorable service from another era in railroad and industrial history. Thanks again for sharing these fine images and video with us.

MC