Here - Friends of the Burlington Northern Railroad

“ ’ROUND THE HORN: AVALUABLE PIECE OF RAILROAD”by Earl CurrieSome of the most important strategic, long-term decisionsmade by railway companies are which of two or morealternate routes should be designated the “preferred route”for its operation. Such decisions are a fundamental part of theplanning that must be done for mergers where duplicate orparallel lines will result. A railway company must alsoconduct rationalization studies to answer questions as towhich of its alternate lines has the lowest operating cost andwill require the least amount of capital to maintain it to adesired standard. In recent times, such studies have had tobe conducted to determine what amount of capital is requiredto provide the capacity to handle increasing amounts ofbusiness.Decisions on which alternate route is to be retained, or atleast maintained to main line standards are never clear-cut.Even after a detail study has been made covering all aspectsof the question, the answer often is a 60-40 call. Most often,the decision will be based on the view the senior managementhas as to the long-term potential for growth of traffic on thatcorridor. A large part of history’s judgment of a railway CEOmight be based on what decisions were made on thecompany’s route structure. Years after such decisions aremade, it still can be difficult to produce a set of facts thatwould establish beyond doubt whether good decisions weremade. Succeeding generations of railway people at all levels,and from many departments, will rehash those decisions.They become part of the company’s legacy, tradition andfolklore.Following Burlington Northern’s formation in 1970, itmade decisions as to which alternate routes it would retain onseveral major corridors, among them Spokane-Pasco, Laurel-Sandpoint,and on its crossings of the Cascade Mountains.What drove these decisions was the objective not tomaintain duplicate lines between major terminals and junctions.One such case involves the decision made to abandon alesser known secondary line in north central Illinois mostcommonly known as “the Mendota-Denrock line.” It provideda link between the Aurora-Galesburg main line and theGalesburg-Savanna line. Together, these two main linesegments, with the Mendota-Denrock line, provided anPage 4alternate route to the Aurora-Savanna line (commonly referredto as the “C&I,” for Chicago and Iowa, the companythat built the portion of the line between Aurora and Oregon,Illinois).History and backgroundThe Mendota-Denrock line was used for two purposes,first, as a link between Chicago and the Rock Island-Moline-Davenport-Bettendorf industrial complex that contained largefarm machinery manufacturing plants, an Alcoa aluminumplant, and large agri-business companies. A six-day localtrain was run west from Mendota at about 7:00 P.M., doinglocal work to Denrock. It then ran south to Barstow, a yardon the Galesburg-Savanna line, with its cars for the QuadCities. The same crew turned back from Barstow, with mostof its train containing cars destined to the connecting lines inChicago. At Mendota, these cars were picked up by aneastbound train operating from Galesburg to Cicero (Chicago).The round trip was 150 miles. A single SD7 or SD9type locomotive was used.The second function of the Mendota-Denrock line wasthat of an alternate route for trains moving between Auroraand Savanna. Having this alternate route in the network ineffect provided double track capability. No “through freight”type trains were scheduled to run on this line. Instead, it wasused on an “as-needed” basis, at the discretion of the ChiefDispatcher. Following are examples of how the Mendota-Denrock line was used as an alternate to the C&I:1. eastbound unit trains of taconite and potash2. for second sections of regular eastbound trains,mainlyNo. 883. westbound trains of empty cars being returned toloading pointswest of the Twin Cities.Dispatchers and train crews referred to operation viaMendota as “going ’round the horn.”Prior to the start-up of Amtrak in 1971, six daily passengertrains were operated on the C&I (eight per day prior to1968 and 10 per day before about 1964). Four of theseBN Expediter