train departs at 12:30 a.m. for Newton. BICB will be ready at Newton for a 5:15 a.m. departure daily, for a 3:30 p.m. ar- rival at Council Bluffs.
Some local and switch jobs were changed on November 1, as well. All Council Bluffs yard jobs will remain the same, but the Atlantic, Iowa, Rover now starts at 5:00 p.m. daily. The 4:00 a.m. Des Moines, Iowa, DMSW remains the same, which works the Grimes line each morning, and then the UP interchange after BICB departs Des Moines. At Newton, Iowa, the daylight Newton
NTSW has been changed to start at 7:00 a.m. The night NTSW, which handles CBBI to South Amana and BICB back, was changed to 6:00 p.m. Most South Amana, Iowa, yard as- signments remain the same. Two jobs now work at Iowa City. The 7:00 a.m. ICSW shuttles traffic between South Amana and Iowa City daily. This job will work all stations between these points, as well as working the Hills Line as needed. The 4:00 p.m. ICSW will now work all east end Iowa City customers and to Durant, Iowa, as necessary. At Rock Island, the 9:00 p.m. RISW remains unchanged.
At Silvis, SISW assignments are now on duty at 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. One of these jobs will make a transfer run to Rock Island on a daily basis. The third SISW is now on duty at 7:00 p.m. The rest of the jobs east of Silvis remain the same. —ALLAN HUNT
Pacific Imperial Railroad
Another chapter in the effort to reopen the Pacific Imperial Railroad (the former
Lake State Railway New Look For
Lake State Railway SD40-2 No. 6305 is fresh out of the paint shop at Metro East Industries in East St Louis, Ill., on November 24, 2015. This unit is one of three ex-CITX SD40-2s being painted by MEI. It was built as KCS SD40 No. 622, later to SOO No. 6400, then CP No. 6400. It was rebuilt as a SD40-2 as GCFX (Alstom) No. 3095, later transferred to CITX, and then acquired by LSRC. Michigan-based Lake State Railway took over the remaining operations of the Detroit & Mackinac in 1992, and later added 67 miles of former CSX lines as subsidiary Saginaw Bay Southern Railway.
PHOTO BY MARK MAUTNER
San Diego & Arizona Eastern) has com- menced. Investment company Conatus Capital Group has purchased a majori- ty interest in Pacific Imperial and plans to reopen the 70.4-mile Desert Line between the Mexican border and the junction with the Union Pacific at Plas- ter City, Calif. Once part of the mighty Southern Pacific, the SD&AE was sold off in 1979 to San Diego’s Metropolitan Transit Development Board. Freight service was operated for a few years but the line was plagued with washouts. Since the early 1980s, the railroad has seen many operators and attempts to re- open the line to Plaster City, but most have been long on hopes and dreams and short on substance. Several of the opera- tions have ended in scandals.
Montana Rail Link
With declining traffic on its west end, Montana Rail Link has ceased running its Paradise Local, a train long popular with visiting rail enthusiasts. The train was based out of Paradise, Mont., and served industries between St. Regis and Thompson Falls, although it occasionally went beyond those boundaries when traf- fic demanded. The train frequently ran with a pair of the railroad’s classic GP9s. It made its last run on October 23, 2015. Just a month before the last run,
Tricon Timber in St. Regis, Mont., an- nounced it was laying off 90 full-time employees at the mill. Company officials attributed the layoffs to the end of a soft- wood lumber agreement with Canada, which enables Canadian companies to ship product duty-free. Tricon was one of two industries still served by the local, the other being Thompson River Lumber
in Thompson Falls. Now both industries will be switched by MRL’s twice-daily Gas Local that runs between Missoula and Thompson Falls. —JUSTIN FRANZ
Rock & Rail
Martin Marietta Materials has filed to acquire control of Colorado’s Rock & Rail, Inc. Martin Marietta Materials currently controls the Alamo North Tex- as Railroad and Alamo Gulf Coast Rail- road, both in Texas.
Texas-Pacífico
Thanks to the construction of the Trans-Pecos Pipeline, the Texas-Pacifico Railroad is planning on running trains over the southern portion of the old South Orient for the first time in several years. Fires in 2008 and 2011 destroyed the railroad’s international bridge at Presidio, Texas. While the railroad in- tends to rebuild and reopen the bridge, it’s been slow going, leaving no traffic on the south portion of the railroad. Now the railroad will begin hauling pipe to Alpine in February and contin- ue through spring, providing some much needed revenue to the south end.
West Belt Railway
The new West Belt Railway (WBRY) has filed to lease and operate 9.66 miles of railroad from Terminal Railroad Asso- ciation of St. Louis. The two segments to be leased are the West Belt Industry Lead from mile 1.07 at Adelaide Avenue to the end of track at mile 9.54, and the Cen-
14 JANUARY 2016 •
RAILFAN.COM
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