TP&W M-EPEF 3-20-23

I still abide the principal: If you can catch a TP&W road freight, do it! 

And I'm always rewarded when I do. Today's train left East Peoria at 1434 hours with 87 cars. It stopped at Cruger to add 26, which being loaded and heading east confirms that they contained soybeans for Incobrasa Industries at Gilman. 

M-EPEF and M-EFEP typically only operate two cycles per week, which makes their length and variety of traffic a bit deceiving. Yet, the TP&W of the 2020s enjoys much greater variety of through carload business on its East End, as compared to startup in 1989 and through the 1990s.

Pics of early Gordon Fuller-era TP&W through freights show trains dominated by double stacks, TOFC and grain, sprinkled with some dry and liquid fertilizer traffic, chemicals and perhaps some lumber.

The Conrail split of June 1, 1999 added a variety of carload business to TP&W, as previous CR-direct routings to and from Peoria (via NS haulage west of Lafayette, Indiana for three years prior) shifted to TPW-Reynolds-CSXT routings. 

Industrial development - Incobrasa at Gilman in 1997, recent successes with IntePlast, Plastic Express and Sweetener Supply in Remington/Wolcott - and lease and operation of the Winamac Southern Railway, have lots of new traffic moving on the TP&W as well. 


CAPTION: The Toledo, Peoria & Western Railway's East End road freight, M-EPEF (Manifest, E. Peoria IL to Effner IL) rolls through Eureka, Illinois shortly after pulling 26 soybean loads from Grainland Co-operative's Cruger elevator. After 30 seconds of pacing video on US 24, I shot the train again just west of Secor. TPW 3046, TPW 5015, TPW 5010 and TPW 3442 have 113 cars (the first 26 from Cruger).

- David P. Jordan

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