Ask Peoria Station! 11-9-17
It is time for Q & A!
Feel free to post your questions in the comments section on any transportation topic. If I don't have an answer, I'll find one.
- David P. Jordan
PIA - A History: Events of 1980
To understand events of 1980, we must begin in late-1979. The completion of the Interstate 474 bypass (and Airport Road interchange) on December 20 that year expanded PIA's catchment area, but unfortunately failed to compensate for an increasingly difficult period in local aviation history. The UAW Local 974 struck area Caterpillar Tractor Company plant on October 1, 1979, forcing a reduction in manufacturing and logistics operations. The walkout ended in mid-December but reduced corporate (and probably leisure) travel, impacting passenger traffic at the Greater Peoria Airport. On October 6, 1979 the Federal Reserve changed its monetary policy as a means to slay inflation, resulting in much higher interest rates. Already suffering from rising unemployment, the national economy plunged into recession from January to July 1980. From May 5 through June 1, Ozark Air Lines was shut down due to a mechanic's strike. As a consequence of each event noted above, PIA passenger...
Do you think that we will see another ULCC (ultra low cost carrier) to serve central Illinois? (Besides Allegiant). Frontier has been entering smaller markets like Madison, WI and Cedar Rapids, IA. And spirit also is in smaller markets (Like La Trobe, PA and Atlantic City, NJ). I am hoping to see service to Denver from Peoria start back up in the near future.
ReplyDeleteIf United [Express] doesn't resume Peoria-Denver soon, the airport authority may try to lure Frontier Airlines. I'd be surprised if UA service to Denver doesn't resume within a year though.
DeleteI know Conrail allowed MILW to conduct interchange with TP&W at Kentland when MILW gained trackage rights on CR after abandoning its parallel line through Webster. However, I have never heard if UP/SBD allowed SOO/MILW to interchange with TP&W at Watseka after receiving new trackage rights when Conrail abandoned its own line.
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Erik Berg's Kentland Album on Flickr shows AT&SF and MILW/SOO interchange operations still existed as late as 1988, even as AT&SF was trying to sell its ex-TP&W lines and SOO was negotiating with CSX for trackage rights between Chicago and Terre Haute to get off Conrail's slow route between the same points.
Deletehttps://www.flickr.com/photos/116863747@N08/albums/72157651680047709
The SOO shifted its trains to CSX on January 9, 1989 and TP&W was reborn less than a month later on February 3. The TP&W's entry in the Official Railway Guide's Nov-Dec 1989 edition does list SOO as a connection, so it is possible that it hadn't yet given up trackage rights on Conrail between Chicago and Terre Haute. I can't imagine though that they continued using this line simply to interchange with TP&W as volume was too small to justify such operations.
A few thoughts -
(1) AT&SF-SOO interchange in the late 1980s probably consisted of occasional lumber to ex-TP&W customers such as Illinois River Lumber Co. in East Peoria and Morton Buildings in Morton, grain from North Dakota and/or Minnesota to ADM's barge loadout in Peoria (there was an actual move like this from Minneapolis in 1983). Scrap metal from SOO origins in Chicago or Wisconsin to Caterpillar's Mapleton foundry was possible as well. Hubinger's Keokuk wet corn refinery may have shipped corn syrup to SOO-served food processors in the Chicago area and in Wisconsin.
(2) When the SOO negotiated with CSX for trackage rights between Chicago and Terre Haute, it was either uninterested in securing interchange rights with then-Santa Fe at Watseka or CSX refused to allow it. CSX might have refused to allow it to avoid having regular coal train interchange (two 90-car trains per week, plus a combined train of empties) disrupted.
(3) Interchange between SOO and AT&SF had diminished to a point that neither carrier sought to maintain their connection after the shift to CSX trackage rights. If volume was significant, then one would think a shipper or two would have objected to SOO's shift to CSX if it didn't include AT&SF interchange rights at Watseka. But volume was probably insignificant, and no one opposed the change in trackage.
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