Gritty, Industrial Railroading - Union Pacific. Int'l Paper. Lincoln, Illinois.
Saturday morning, I caught Union Pacific's LSF51 (Bloomington IL to Carlinville IL) local switching International Paper Co. in Lincoln, Illinois.
Built in 1947 by U. S. Corrugated, the "box factory" is located on a remnant of Illinois Central Railroad's Havana District, and employs about 100. Boise Cascade purchased the plant in 1984 and Willamette purchased it in 1992. Willamette added a warehouse (including an enclosure for boxcar unloading) in 2002 about which time the company was acquired by its competitor, Weyerhaeuser Co. Six years later, International Paper Co. acquired Weyerhaeuser's corrugated packaging operations.
Like many light-density, grain belt branchlines, Illinois Central's Havana District suffered from motor carrier competition and proximity to river barge service. Successor Illinois Central Gulf abandoned most of the line in segments between 1981 and 1987. All that is left are three sections at Lincoln, Clinton and Champaign-Seymour.
In April 1987, Illinois Central Gulf sold its former Chicago & Alton Railroad lines to the Chicago, Missouri & Western Railway. That carrier paid too much for a line with too little traffic and filed for bankruptcy a year after startup. The CM&W's Joliet-E. St. Louis route was acquired by a subsidiary of Southern Pacific Lines in November 1989.
At the time SP acquired this route, the old Havana District stub served three customers - Willamette Industries, MII Inc. and Hubbard Feeds. By the time Union Pacific acquired Southern Pacific in 1996, only Willamette continued to use rail service.
Service to the "box factory" is provided by Union Pacific's LSF51 local three days per week. The crew is called out of Bloomington, probably around 7:00am, and works south to Springfield and Carlinville before returning north the following day as LSF50. There is no siding or yard in Lincoln to leave cars for other customers while switching International Paper Co. so the crew runs the entire train onto the branch. When finished, it makes a reverse move back onto the main line to continue its journey south.
I caught LSF51 switching International Paper around 9:00 Saturday morning, April 21, 2018. The train had a pair of GP60s - 1163 and 1158. The latter had been UP 1143, but was recently re-numbered to avoid conflict with a newly-painted military heritage unit.
Shooting video and stills is easy on this line. Trains stop to flag each crossing (at least when in reverse). At the junction on Lincoln's south side, the train is likely to wait for the passage of other traffic (like Amtrak 301) before resuming its journey south.
Like many light-density, grain belt branchlines, Illinois Central's Havana District suffered from motor carrier competition and proximity to river barge service. Successor Illinois Central Gulf abandoned most of the line in segments between 1981 and 1987. All that is left are three sections at Lincoln, Clinton and Champaign-Seymour.
In April 1987, Illinois Central Gulf sold its former Chicago & Alton Railroad lines to the Chicago, Missouri & Western Railway. That carrier paid too much for a line with too little traffic and filed for bankruptcy a year after startup. The CM&W's Joliet-E. St. Louis route was acquired by a subsidiary of Southern Pacific Lines in November 1989.
At the time SP acquired this route, the old Havana District stub served three customers - Willamette Industries, MII Inc. and Hubbard Feeds. By the time Union Pacific acquired Southern Pacific in 1996, only Willamette continued to use rail service.
Service to the "box factory" is provided by Union Pacific's LSF51 local three days per week. The crew is called out of Bloomington, probably around 7:00am, and works south to Springfield and Carlinville before returning north the following day as LSF50. There is no siding or yard in Lincoln to leave cars for other customers while switching International Paper Co. so the crew runs the entire train onto the branch. When finished, it makes a reverse move back onto the main line to continue its journey south.
I caught LSF51 switching International Paper around 9:00 Saturday morning, April 21, 2018. The train had a pair of GP60s - 1163 and 1158. The latter had been UP 1143, but was recently re-numbered to avoid conflict with a newly-painted military heritage unit.
Shooting video and stills is easy on this line. Trains stop to flag each crossing (at least when in reverse). At the junction on Lincoln's south side, the train is likely to wait for the passage of other traffic (like Amtrak 301) before resuming its journey south.
- David P. Jordan
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