HammerJack wrote:It is nice to see three main tracks all the way from 25th Ave. to West Chicago, but between 25th Ave. to Vale, there are still only two main tracks. Any idea if and when this section of the line will get upgraded to three? Right now it is still a bit of a bottleneck, so it would be nice to get three main tracks all the way from Chicago to West Chicago (Kress I think). Also, are there plans to upgrade the section of the line in Geneva (Kress to Peck?) to three main tracks? I don't really know if this would increase capacity a whole lot, but i was just wondering.
IMO, the single biggest obstacle to adding capacity on the Geneva sub is JB Tower in West Chicago. Acquired by CN five years ago after their purchase of the EJ&E, it's where their single track north-south main (Leithton sub) crosses the triple-tracked Geneva sub at grade. In the few years before being merged into CN, the "J" ran about 10 trains per day or so (a figure not reached often, 7 to 8 was more the average), but now that's effectively more than doubled to 20-24 trains with CN using this route as its main link between the Waukesha sub to the north and its important Joliet and/or Markham yards to the south. With freight increasing on the UP side as well, you now have upwards of something like 110 trains per day from both carriers plus Metra all vying for a slot through this bottleneck, give or take a few UP freights on the Geneva sub as coal, ethanol, or frac sand traffic ebbs and flows. Even with the reduced Metra schedule on weekends, that's still about 80 trains. This is where any extra capacity meets a black hole.
I'm not sure if CN eventually plans to close this tower and grade separate the crossing (haven't heard anything official), but until that happens, even when UP adds the third main to the two existing gaps, it will have only a negligible effect on capacity at best. Metra has stated that they'd like to add trains to this route, and beef up the service to perhaps approach BNSF levels. I think, even in a perfect world that's ambitious, but despite the recent upgrades to the physical plant (not a bad place to start), given the current remaining challenges, that's still a long way off right now. How long is very much open to debate...
For more
reading...