Nubbin of track in Chicago

I was taking in the classic position light signals in Chicago and wandered down a little spur just to the west of them. The spur leads to an ADM mill and there are some VERY old rails being used. I have pictures showing dates from the teens! Can anyone shed light on how often cars are delivered and removed? Is there any schedule to it? Is there a possibility that the rails are original to the building of the spur? I'm going to poke around some fire insurance maps but I'd love any info anyone can provide.

After spending way too long looking at fire insurance maps I was able to find out that the mill existed in 1916. More searching with our master Google brought the year down to 1887. There are hints at earlier times but nothing concrete. Not a bad customer for the railroads that came and went.

ryanbytes wrote:I was taking in the classic position light signals in Chicago and wandered down a little spur just to the west of them. The spur leads to an ADM mill and there are some VERY old rails being used. I have pictures showing dates from the teens! Can anyone shed light on how often cars are delivered and removed? Is there any schedule to it? Is there a possibility that the rails are original to the building of the spur? I'm going to poke around some fire insurance maps but I'd love any info anyone can provide.

Sounds like you're talking about the spur into ADM along the Metra Milwaukee District tracks to Union Station. The track from A-2 to the spur switch (essentially track 4 of the "North Joint Tracks") appears to be NS owned (the other three are Metra owned) although it is completely disconnected from the rest of NS. I assume when the PRR (former Panhandle) sold the half-interest in the tracks to the Milwaukee Road, PRR retained freight rights which passed through PC and Conrail to NS. I have no idea where ownership passes from NS to ADM but ADM has their own little pusher unit to move cars within the plant.

I have no idea how often NS goes there. They do sometimes leave a unit there overnight as three or four times a year I'll see it just sitting there on my morning commute. Considering that NS's route there is lots of trackage rights over busy lines, I suspect it's a long process to get there and back (perhaps the unit overnighting there is due to outlawing). I doubt they get to go through A-2 during rush hours and after that, it's UP's busy Rockwell sub. (the former Panhandle being abandoned south of A-2 (railroad east but that's meaningless since the Panhandle was timetable east both ways from A-2)).

Maybe it happens often but it seems strange for NS to keep a customer that's so difficult to get to. A wild guess by me is that it's either the ADM pull or a great contract by the original owner of the mill way back when.

As of a few years ago, this train's symbol was NS BC35, a local turn out of Ashland Ave. yard about 5 miles south of the ADM plant. Actually, the routing isn't too difficult; gets there via UP's Rockwell sub, then crosses over to the joint NS-CSX (technically BOCT) line when the route splits at Ogden Ave., as the Rockwell sub turns left into UP's Global one facility. The latter segment isn't quite as busy these days as the former...

Doepack is correct, the job that goes to ADM daily is the BC35 out of Ashland yard, starts in the late afternoon, its not to far of a haul, like he said about 5 miles down the NS main line which then turns into the UP Rockwell tracks about halfway. Get permission from Global to go onto their tracks and then at the fork in the tracks we stay to the right to go to ADM where if you went left would take you to UP Proviso

As far as the ADM job themselves, yeah they are a big customer but that job is a huge pain in the rear, tracks inside the plant are garbage, need to be redone in a major way, at least once or more a month a car or cars derail due to horrible track conditions. About leaving the engine there, typically its left there cause the crew was dead and then we just cab out the next day and bring back the engine and whatever cars need to come back to the yard