Traffic density changes in the past 30 years on freight railroads’ main lines to Chicago reflect factors both geographic and corporate. Geographic factors include the shift of manufacturing from domestic to offshore; air quality regulations that closed high-sulfur Western mines; and general population and economic growth. Corporate factors include the desire of railroad managements to […]
The undeniable triumph of U.S. railroading can be seen in this graph of revenue ton-miles: the most basic unit of measurement (hauling one ton of freight one mile) for the work railroads perform. The data for this illustration come from the Association of American Railroads, and are confined to Class I railroads, the largest group […]
What will railroading look like 27 years from now? Will yards be jammed, main lines clogged, and trains backed up from terminals for 30 miles or more? Or will routes be fluid, with freights roaring by every 8 to 10 minutes on main lines three, four, and even six tracks wide? Either future could happen, […]
If you want a glimpse of railroad operations six decades ago, this map of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy provides a window. It’s based on Burlington’s November 1947 freight train operating plan, a chart of schedules furnished to company officers. (Our map was modified to put eastbounds and westbounds on one page and converted to […]
This map of the Kansas City Southern and Louisiana & Arkansas (just prior to their 1939 operational merger) is based on a document undoubtedly produced by the KCS traffic department to show shippers the abundance of natural resources within the roads’ territory. KCS founder Arthur Stilwell had left his secure position with a Hartford insurance […]
Three distinct periods of railway construction created the grain-gathering network that served the farmers of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The first 3,000 miles were built between 1881 and the onset of a depression in 1893. Better times returned in 1896, fueling an incredible boom that saw the construction of more than 11,000 route- miles by […]
If you want to sense the impact of coal on the railroad industry, consider this: The state that ranks last in population — Wyoming, with a little more than 500,000 residents — originates one of every five tons of freight hauled by American railroads. The 419 million gross tons that began its journey in Wyoming […]
This is a snapshot of traffic across the Continental Divide in 1980 and 2000 on U.S. transcontinental routes. It’s inherent in map-making that accuracy gets sacrificed on the altar of clarity: traffic density is by no means uniform across the shaded line segments, and a slightly different picture would emerge were the snapshots taken in […]
Coal is the No. 1 rail-shipped commodity by tonnage in the U.S., and power plants consume most of it. Three key characteristics shape this map (see June 2002 Trains for the East, and January 2003 for the South): Population is concentrated in cities; most plants are mine-mouth or near the mine; and its most populous […]
Orange poppies and a beautiful blue sky frame Union Pacific boxcars at Eugene Yard, Ore., in May 2009. Tyler J. Dzierzek photo […]
Bloomer Line GP9 No. 7561 spots grain cars at Cullom, Ill., on Aug. 13, 2007. Though Bloomer operates ex-Illinois Central track, its locomotives are an unmistakable homage to Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. Matt Lastovich photo […]
When the TRAINS staff began preparing its April 2010 report on obscure coal moves in North America, we got more photos than we bargained for. In no particular order, here are five more cool coal moves. Two SD90MACs on lease to Wheeling & Lake Erie lead two run-through Union Pacific diesels on a Powder River […]
