BRC served industries north of Clearing Yard.

There is so little carload traffic left that I wanted to capture this information of the industries that are still served by BRC on their mainline along Cicero Ave that went north from the east end of Clearing Yard. Satellite images are embedded throughout this posting.

We begin with this local that Nick describes.

Nick Hart posted

This BRC local out of Clearing Yard switches industries around the Chicago/Cicero border. It operates three days a week (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays) and is usually a late morning departure out of Clearing. It's two main customers that I know of are Charter Steel in Chicago, along with Best Foods, located less than a mile north of where this photo was taken. There's a few other industries that I don't know of. Anyone by chance know the names?

On this sunny afternoon, the train is headed back south to Clearing after switching Best Foods. Crossing the Cal Sag Channel and the BNSF Chillicothe Subdivision (former ATSF) at the location known as LeMoyne, the local has a BRC MP15AC in charge.

Chicago, IL
April 19th, 2018
Craig Cloud How often is the interchange track used?
Nick Hart Craig Cloud Not sure how often it's used, but I believe NS runs a few stacks to Landers Yard, utilizing that connection track.
Zaky Joseph That interchange track connects the BNSF (Santa Fe) junction yard with the BRC. They run stack train transfers to Norfolk Southerns Landers yard, as well as light power and transfer moves from BNSFs Corwith Yard to BNSFs Cicero yard, via the BRC.
Dennis DeBruler Zaky Joseph I'm glad to hear that at least some container traffic is interchanged using steel wheels instead of rubber wheels. (For my reference: message 01/23/09 18:42 in https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,1854347)
Dennis DeBruler Looking at the connectors at the former Santa Fe and CB&Q routes, it looks like the transfers would have to be a shoving move along the BRC. That would explain why they are building the Panhandle Project: https://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/.../create-wa4...
Zaky Joseph This job also switches home products, south of the CN diamonds at Lemoyne (I55 North of Cicero Ave). And north of Archer ave
Taylor Veldman This job also serves Unilever off of 31st
Ean Kahn-Treras Different name, but same spot as Unilever. 31st St indeed.

There is one other place just south of 47th Street that they serve. You can see 3 or 4 bay hoppers in the satellite view.
Ean Kahn-Treras It amazes me that the Brc couldnt wiggle away any of the former CRI trackage in the lemoyne industrial park before it was all left for dead. Lots of industrial warehouse space back in there now.
[Actually, the crossing is Nerska that was controlled by BRC's Lemoyne tower. Note the bridge in the background.]

4401 W Roosevelt

Charter Steel Trading started as a brokerage house in 1974. It expanded into warehouse and slitting slitting services in this facility at 4401 W Roosevelt Rd in Chicago.  We can tell by the curved tree line in the lower-left corner that some buildings in this area had rail service.

1600 S. Kostner

In 2011, they expanded into cut-to-length services with a second facility. We can see that this facility receives coils of steel in covered coil cars. If we follow this spur to the west, we see it branches from the middle of the remnants of BRC's 12th (22nd) Street Yard. This yard used to support a lot of industries off its 16th Street Branch.

Street View

They have changed their track layout since the most recent satellite image to use the south part of the building. It appears that Dow Chemical is using their property as a parking lot for trailers as well as cars.

Satellite

Nick Hart posted

BRC MP15DC 150 makes a pick-up at Charter Steel, before heading south to Best Foods and Home Products. This is the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday local out of Clearing Yard. Most of the time, it runs with Geeps, so it was nice to see it operating with a switcher on this sunny afternoon.

*Note* Taken on private property, with permission obtained from Charter Steel staff.

Chicago, IL
April 24th, 2018

Zaky Joseph posted
BRC #237 switching at Charter Steel in Chicago with a little bit of street running. 11/21/18.
Zaky Joseph John DeWit Woodlock II it should run Tues, Thurs, and Sat, as long as there are steel cars to be picked up or dropped off there.

Satellite

William L. Brushaber One correction, Best Foods at 2816 s.Kilbourn is in Chicago and this 77yr old was 1st introduced to railfaning in the'40's by my grandfather when the BRC still had steam. And my Suntimes paper route in 1955 was 28th St. ,Kilbourn and Kenneth st.. I also got to watch DiamondT trucks on the test track north of 28th St. where there is a Highschool now. The BRC is the border between Cicero and Chicago .

Satellite

I don't know why, but Google offered two different images for the same URL. I'm saving both of them because they captured two different staging and spotting patterns.

By the diagonal (lower-left corner) and curved side (upper-middle) of buildings, you can see that a spur used to run all the way through the property to Kilburn Ave.

Satellite

Later, when I was looking for an oil company, I found a satellite image that not only has a track past the curved building, there are two cars spotted at the curve. And Google labeled it Unilever Best Foods. I also are a lot more tanks on the property.

Satellite

I'm back to the newer image, and a lot of the tanks have been removed. But they have built some new tanks down by an auxiliary building. I'm guessing the change is because they switched some receivables from rail to truck.

Satellite

Satellite

This job also serves Homz Products. Judging from the silos and covered hoppers, I'm guessing they receive plastic pellets. Browsing some of their products (e.g. seasonal), many of them are made with plastic.


Taylor Veldman This job also serves Unilever off of 31st.
Dennis DeBruler Is it BWAY now? It looks like their spur has been paved over. https://www.google.com/.../data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4...

Satellite

Ean Kahn-Treras It amazes me that the Brc couldnt wiggle away any of the former CRI trackage in the lemoyne industrial park before it was all left for dead. Lots of industrial warehouse space back in there now.
Dennis DeBruler Indeed, it is just east of their Lemoyne Yard. https://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/.../chicago-and...




The petroleum company is served by a different job.

Satellite

By "north", I meant along the mainline that goes north to the former Milwaukee route. But another interpretation of north would be all of the rail-served industries that were along the north side of Clearing Yard.

Alliance Steel

Unfortunately, BRC is loosing another industry --- Alliance Steel.

Lucas Irons shared an InsideIndianaBusiness link.

David Jordan The Belt Railway of Chicago's 8002 Tariff lists Alliance Steel at 6499 W. 66TH Place in Bedford Park, which is close to the 65th Street address listed elsewhere. 
http://www2.beltrailway.com/customers/8002.pdf

Alliance Steel is moving to Gary, IN.

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Mondelez/Nabisco Chicago and Naperville plants are still rail served

Neither plant ships via rail anymore, but both still receive bulk supplies via rail. BRC serves the Chicago Plant, and BNSF/CB&Q serves the Naperville Plant.

Naperville

(Satellite)  Google Maps seems to be broken this week. It is not offering a 3D view nor street views from Ogden. The photos on the map site imply that this plant makes Oreos. But I don't believe that is true because they were made in the Chicago plant described below. I have not been able to determine what this plant makes.

The plant is well landscaped in front so trees hide an overall view of the front of the plant. But the main building is tall enough that you can see above the Land Rover dealer that it still has its Nabisco signs even though it is now owned by Mondelez. You can barely see the second sign on the stairway enclosure on the right.

trips/buildings/nabisco/Naperville 3556 taken 20160716

Satellite images show the shipping spur has been paved over for use by trucks, but the receiving spur still serves two leads into the building. Note the yellow fall projector over the northern lead.

Satellite

I drove around the (big) block to see what I could find concerning its rail service. From Jefferson Avenue I could see the fall protector and a covered hopper car. There are storage silos behind the trees on the right.

I've seen a reference to delivering wheat, not flour, to the plant. So I digitally zoomed in on the hopper car. It has three bays instead of five, so it is a delivering wheat instead of flour. That means the plant does its own milling. That would explain why it has so many storage silos compared to Pepperidge Farm that receives flour and normally pneumatically transfers the flour from a car directly to its baking machinery.

This is the best view I got of the silos from the road.

Once again, a satellite image is more useful. Not only is there a hidden eleventh silo, the hoses going to each silo indicate they a pneumatically loaded.

Statellite

Satellite

In my drive around the "block," I pulled into a parking lot to take a photo (below) of the south side of a cut of four cars. A satellite image (right) also has four cars on the spur between the receiving lead and Jefferson Avenue. The tall trees in the background of the photo mark where a remnant of the shipping lead still exists. Stephen Schmidt in a comment on one of my Facebook postings explained: "305 is up there five nights a week to spot wheat loads. Pretty large customer for Eola."

BNSF now uses the remnant of the shipping lead as their "Nabisco Yard." Here we see the ballast regulator and tamper of a tie replacement crew parked in that yard. There is a lot more equipment hidden by the trees that is parked further down on the lead.

20181025 6526

While I was in the corner of a parking lot, I caught the turnout for the receiving lead and the north side of a cut of seven hoppers parked on the spur. The jointed track is getting rather wavy.

Since I'm a railfan, not a shiny-sheet-metal-in-front-of-a-train fan, here is the entire photo where we can see a stack of jointed rail on the left side and a couple of ribbons on the right.

Those ribbons look like they are about 150' long, which means they probably came from a crossing replacement. Below, on the left side of the photo, are the rails they pulled off M1 on Nov 8, 2018 from the Main Street crossing in Downers Grove, IL. The flexibility of even heavyweight rail continues to amaze me. (I'm sure that BNSF installs only their best rail on the Racetrack because commuters and Amtrak run 70mph through here and a lot of heavy freight runs at 40mph.)

20180909 5119

I deliberately turned my camera to the left to take the above photo that included the scrap rail after I took this photo that included the replacement track for the M3 work.

Since the receiving leads cross the driveway to the shipping docks, David caught an up close view of #2380. Of particular note is the Remote Control Equipment sign under the number. I did not know that BNSF (actually, their unions) allows remote control. It is quite common within companies that have their own locomotive such as the steel mills in Northwest Indiana. The H1 livery means that it is an older model. The Diesel Shop indicates #2380 is a GP38-2 built in 1978. Local freights are the railroading equivalent of putting a horse out to pasture because they spend most of their time idling or going slow and because they don't stray too far away from repair shops. I've even seen photos of Sante Fe and BN liveries in local trains.

David Miller

Chicago Plant

(Nabisco Satellite; Mondelez Satellite)

If you look through the photos on the satellite pages, you will see shipping containers parked at the loading bays (e.g. Hug Group). So this plant probably ships some product over 500 miles away. I wonder if it supplies the entire country. But it looks like they still receive corn syrup (grey tank cars) and flour (white hoppers) in bulk by rail. (I don't know what would be in the black tank car and the red, 3-bay hopper car.)

Nick Hart posted

The South Chicago Job has finished its air test and is on the move at Kedzie Avenue in Chicago, a little east of Hayford Junction. With a big train, a pair of hard working SD40-3's was just what the doctor ordered. In the background, the Nabisco Bakery Job can be seen preparing to tie onto its pick-up with a GP23-ECO in charge. Once tied on, the Bakery Job would make the short trip back home to Clearing Yard.

February 2nd, 2016

I wonder if they have their own switcher because the track next to the plant is just a staging area. The flour is unloaded inside the plant.

Satellite

Mondelez bought Nabisco, but they have been slow to change the signs on their buildings because Americans recognize the Nabisco brand. If they do recognize Mondelez, it is probably because they built new Oreo Cookie production lines in Mexico instead of in this plant. Plus, it has to be expensive to replace that sign on the side of the building. The move of Oreo production to Mexico in 2016 caused about half of the 1,200 workers to be laid off. The cookie was first made in New York City in 1912, and this plant had been churning them out since 1953.

Yoshi Shima

But they are changing the signs that are cheap to change.

Ryan Logan

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Pennsy Cummings Branch

Dennis DeBruler posted four photos with the comment:

A Joe Usselman photo, used with permission.
Joe's comment: "A crappy shot of the BRC while standing on the former PRR Cummings branch in Chicago in 2010."
Bob Lalich commented: "The ex-PRR Cummings Branch was abandoned in the early 70s I believe, and the bridge over the BRC was removed to provide better clearance. It branched off the Ft Wayne line just west of Rock Island Jct, passed over the BRC to South Works, Rock Island and BRC to 100th St tracks on its own bridges, then paralleled the BRC down to 105th St."
Additional comments are on the photos.

1
The train in the background on the left is on the BRC-NS/Pennsy connector. It is one of the few tracks left in the Rock Island Junction. The bridges from left (north) to right are a B&OCT remnant of a Strauss trunnion bascule, 2 NYC abandoned lift bridges, a hole where a PRR lift bridge used to be, the NS/PRR lift bridge, and the Skyway.

2
This abandoned overpass over 95th street is a remnant of the branch. The trees verify that it has been abandoned for a long time.https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7227536,-87.5479789,113m/data=!3m1!1e3

3
This 1938 aerial photo caught a train on the branch so it is easy to follow the route of the branch.

4
The dark diagonal line at the top center of this 1938 aerial photo is the Cummings branch. It connected with railroads that served Wisconsin Steel that was south of 106th. This photo excerpt shows just part of the Wisconsin Steel complex. I didn't find any other businesses west of the PRR branch. So when Wisconsin Steel went bankrupt, the purpose of this branch disappeared.

xxx

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