TP&W's historic source of intermodal traffic (East Peoria to and from western points) is gone. Former customers now use BNSF's Logistics park (and one would suspect UP's Global III). However, the aforementioned deterioration in service by Norfolk Southern, ended that railroad's once significant intermodal business. By late 1999, TP&W and Canadian National offered joint intermodal service for container traffic moving between the east coast and Peoria area. Norfolk Southern's major customer for their former service, Caterpillar, signed up immediately (thus avoiding higher drayage costs to and from NS facilities at Chicago). Caterpillar plants in Illinois, Mossville (diesel engines), East Peoria (track-type tractors), Decatur (mining trucks, scrapers and graders) and Aurora (wheel loaders, forestry equipment and excavators) use TP&W's East Peoria facility as a hub for import/export traffic. Cat has suppliers and parts plants in Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and others plus a Regional Distribution Center in Grimbergen, Belgium. Illinois plants ship and receive parts to and from these locations. Also, the Global Distribution Center at Morton ships and receives parts via the EP intermodal terminal.
Other customers include Bemis (receives kraft paper from Sweden), probably both large chemical plants in Mapleton (ship product overseas) and a customer in Fort Madison receives imported chemicals. Some traffic is also moving via New Orleans. A small amount of business goes to BNSF's Logistics Park, is "rubber tired" to Markham and sent to EP via rail again (doesn't make sense to me!).
I don't work for TP&W so I don't have any traffic figures but actual customers include grain elevators at Reynolds, Wolcott, Remington, Goodland (2) and Kentland in Indiana and Sheldon (2), Crescent City, La Hogue, Piper City, Chatworth, Forrest, Fairbury, Weston, Meadows, Gridley and Cruger in Illinois.
Fertilizer dealers are served at Burnettsville, Idaville, Reynolds, Wolcott, Hoosierlift, Goodland (2), Kentland (on old Conrail trackage) in Indiana and Sheldon, Crescent City (2), Gilman, Fairbury (2), Chenoa and Gridley in Illinois.
Other East End customers are: Cole Hardwood at Logansport; FBI Buildings (transloads at Hoosierlift), Smith Transport (used to get paper) and Impact Co-Op (grain elevator served but warehouse gets boxcars loaded with baled hay) at Remington; Rogers Group/Newton County Stone at Perkins; Lifetime Doors at Watseka (gets wood on occasion), Incobrasa Industries (soybean processing) at Gilman and Kerry Ingredients at Gridley (gets rice).
Peoria area customers are: Morton Buildings (IB lumber), Fort Transfer (IB ag chemicals) and Nestle USA/Libby's at Morton; East Peoria Materials & Rail Yard, With a Grain of Salt and an intermodal terminal at East Peoria; Archer Daniels Midland, ADM Growmark, Peoria Barge Terminal (TP&W hasn't been in there for several years) and Peoria River Terminal (occasional liquid asphalt shipments) at Peoria; Caterpillar RPF and A. Miller & Co (no service in three years) for BNSF; Keystone Steel & Wire (haven't served the Wire Mill directly since 1995); AmerenCILCO at Sommer (power plant gets all UP trains at present); Crompton Corp, Degussa-Goldschmidt Chemical, Lonza, Caterpillar (foundry) and CF Industries at Mapleton.
TP&W acts as a CSXT connection for Tazewell & Peoria RR (TZPR). Direct interchange is made with connecting roads at Peoria (UP), East Peoria (TZPR), Farmdale (NS), Chenoa (UP) Chatsworth (BLOL), Gilman (CN), Watseka (CSXT and UP), Webster (KBSR), Reynolds (CSXT - TP&W actually delivers and receives at Lafayette) and Logansport (NS and WSRR). Some of these interchanges, such as Farmdale and Chenoa, see little activity. TP&W does do some interchange with Peoria area roads via TZPR (BNSF mainly but some CN, NS and PRY).
Interchange with BNSF is via TZPR though TP&W actually reaches Galesburg under a trackage rights agreement. TP&W simply acts as hauling agent for BNSF and recieves a fixed per car charge from BNSF for its services. They receive no rate division. A customer at Maquon on BNSF's Peoria Sub, Riverland FS, gets a few cars per year.
During the 90's I used to travel quite a bit to Central Illinois including Peoria and would stay in East Peoria. Evenings during the summer would find me down at the TPW yard. I remember an old F unit, painted in NYC type striping.
The F-unit went to New York State. It was a regular on the Galesburg Job in 1996.
Interesting to hear the NS let service drop, but have resumed it. Does the CN (ex IC) still run a daily train to Peoria?
CN runs L56491, a Decatur to Peoria turn, seven days per week. Unfortunately, it rarely completes its trip within the crew's 12 hours of service. Also, coal and grain extras are frequent (coal from BNSF for ADM in Decatur; coal to IAIS for ADM in Cedar Rapids; grain extras coming out of Iowa utilizing BNSF trackage rights between E. Dubuque and Peoria).
DPJ
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