Rail roads and their tracks.

[buckeyefarmer]

Don't forget Billions to High Speed Rail...

To nowhere.

 

[Cub 7274]

Well I worked on the RR for 36 yrs and the difference from when I hired on until I retired was very real. Spur lines, sidings industry all have disappeared and while trains are longer there are fewer of them. Hump yards no longer needed, flat switching taking over main line Locos used in yards where yrs ago 1200-1700 hp engines were everywhere. Mainlines were removed where trains ran daily. Towns bypassed, the railroads became a money maker for shareholders while shutting down the little guy 100 cars or you dont get service. So much rail has been torn up that the RR's couldn't really handle any new business. Wait until CP starts removing KCS rail etc. There are thousands of locomotives sitting idle everywhere right now that 15 yrs ago were in service and now they're not. Its busy in some spots but yrs ago it was busy everywhere. Just a thought

 

[jjeff]

Neat map of abandoned railroads in North America the blue lines. Most are probably reporpused and or torn up. Apologize for clarity.

 

[MossRoad]

Nice!

Here's another one.

Abandoned & Out of Service Railroad Lines Map

An interactive, continuously updated map of abandoned and out-of-service historical railroad lines and corridors across the entire world.

www.frrandp.com

 

[3 Horse Ranch]

Looking at the map MossRoad linked to and looking at abandoned lines that I am familiar with, I can understand why they were abandoned. They were industry driven dead end lines that became surplus when the factories shut down or the project was completed. Where I lived in Skagit County WA, there were two lines running up the river valley, one went as far as Concrete, about 30 miles east of the freeway, the second line ended at Rockport but was extended to Newhalem by Seattle City Light for their dam projects. The big lumber mills are gone, the cement plants shut down, the dams were completed.

Some of the lines in Whatcom county were also industry driven or were closed down with railroad mergers and railroads with drawing service, The Northern Pacific and Milwaukee Road each shipped one short train a day out of Bellingham. Between the two of them they made up about 20% of the rail traffic through town.

In many ways decrying the demise of the small railroads and their many spur lines is like mourning the loss of Sears or K-Mart. Their bad management and shortsightedness caused their demise and the competition filled the gap, and then some. With Sears and K-Mart, it's Amazon, Walmart and Costco, with the railroads it's trucking and the mega merger railroads, BNSF, CSX, Union Pacific and so on.

Railroads never could have put down enough steel to service all the store and shops trucks do. The result is we have better service, more choices, and lowered costs.

 

[RobS]

It really boils down to simple $ & ¢. Modern railroads are most cost effective when transporting large amounts of goods over long distances. Trucks fill the gaps at either end of those long distances and for shorter transport routes.

 

[MossRoad]

Around here, most of the abandoned lines are between small grain elevator towns. All of the larger towns and cities are still connected by freight rail.

 

[MossRoad]

 

[Hay Dude]

Looking at the map MossRoad linked to and looking at abandoned lines that I am familiar with, I can understand why they were abandoned. They were industry driven dead end lines that became surplus when the factories shut down or the project was completed. Where I lived in Skagit County WA, there were two lines running up the river valley, one went as far as Concrete, about 30 miles east of the freeway, the second line ended at Rockport but was extended to Newhalem by Seattle City Light for their dam projects. The big lumber mills are gone, the cement plants shut down, the dams were completed.

Some of the lines in Whatcom county were also industry driven or were closed down with railroad mergers and railroads with drawing service, The Northern Pacific and Milwaukee Road each shipped one short train a day out of Bellingham. Between the two of them they made up about 20% of the rail traffic through town.

In many ways decrying the demise of the small railroads and their many spur lines is like mourning the loss of Sears or K-Mart. Their bad management and shortsightedness caused their demise and the competition filled the gap, and then some. With Sears and K-Mart, it's Amazon, Walmart and Costco, with the railroads it's trucking and the mega merger railroads, BNSF, CSX, Union Pacific and so on.

Railroads never could have put down enough steel to service all the store and shops trucks do. The result is we have better service, more choices, and lowered costs.

The bigger and more disappointing point being “the factories shut down”.
Now that industry output is nearly all made in China along with the jobs, railways and smaller shops that served the industries. We are at a point where entire industrial production and the trades they utilized are being lost forever.

 

[MossRoad]

Back in the early 70's the city of South Bend pushed for an extension of the South Shore Line into an industrial park on the Northwest side of the airport. They said "businesses are clamoring for rail and air connections." The rail spur serves about 30 factories.

Guess how many rail car loads entered or left that industrial park over the next 40 years? ZERO! That's right. ZERO! They had to replace the two road crossings twice over the decades due to truck traffic damaging the roads. Not rail traffic, because there was NONE. Only truck traffic.

About 10 years ago they ripped the tracks out and paved over the crossings.

The factories and warehouses are still there, operating away. Many have help wanted signs. They're making something there. And distributing things from there, too. But nobody is clamoring for rail access for the past 50 years.

It has little to do with China. It has a lot to do with on demand, the tax system, and the slowness of rail.

Nobody wants inventory in their warehouses, because they'll either be taxed on it or be stuck with it. Nobody wants to ship by rail because of the time it takes VS throwing it on a truck.

When I worked for a company shipping Military vehicles and Postal vans out of AM General in South Bend by rail, we had to order rail cars weeks in advance. They'd get them and then it would take a full day to get them onto the siding. We'd load them up over several days and call for pickup and it would take several days to get them removed and swapped out for more empty cars.

When I worked at the Newspaper, we received most of our newsprint by rail to our warehouse. It could take months for cars of paper to get from the mills in Canada to our paper warehouse here in town. Towards the end, it was very rare that we'd get a car load of newsprint. It was all being trucked in.

Just as the rails did in the canals, trucking is taking away from the rails. The only economical reason to ship by rail now is bulk.

When I watch the trains going through our town, over 100 trains per day, the majority of what I see are dedicated to shipping containers, automobile trains, tanker trains, coal trains (both directions, which is mind boggling), and steel trains. It seems that only about 1/4 of the trains are a mix of cars. Box cars with who knows what, lumber cars, things like that. A few times a year we'll see John Deere trains and the red tractor trains.

But for the most part, due to economics, the trains are dedicated to one product in bulk. Small manufactures ship by truck. And judging by the truck traffic on 80/90 that also runs through this town, somebody is shipping something, but not by rail. Again, nothing to do with China.