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Re: (erielack) FW: CNJ - EL Coke Trains from Overseas

Keith et al,

It sounds like they potentially had a good thing going but execution by the steel co and perhaps DT&I was wanting, and I gather that's why they only ran for a short time. The route was somewhat circuitous anyway, and with the need to park the trains on a regular basis, car utilization was poor. Zug Island was served by National Steel subsidiary Delray Connecting RR, so I presume National had a blast furnace there?

A question about SJ: my detail map shows a connection in the SW quadrant as well, so they could have backed the train onto the DT&I this way. However this connection may post-date EL. Of course, if power and caboose had to be changed anyway, it wouldn't make any difference.

Mr Pelletierre asked about CNJ power running west of Scranton. I think it's unlikely that CNJ locos went beyond the west end of the SE-98/ES-99 pool arrangement. For one thing, EL people may have regardede them as being mechanically suspect. FWIW, the photo of ESX climbing to Clarks Summit showed pure EL power.

A big thank you to Bill and Keith for providing the missing puzzle pieces for this little-known operation.

Paul B

From: krinmich_@_aol.com
Subject: Re: (erielack) FW: CNJ - EL Coke Trains from Overseas

As I recall, we got quite a few of them in early 1975.  They were delivered to the DT&I at SJ Tower Lima.  The interchange was in the NW quadrant so we had to back the trains into the interchange and if I recall correctly the DT&I had to meet us.  I do remember that the interchange was too small to hold the train which is why I'm pretty sure they had to meet us.  The problem we ran into this move was the usual one of capacity.  The trains came too fast and the DT&I couldn't take them as fast as the EL could get them there.  I think that was more due to the steel company not being able to handle it all that quickly.  I'm pretty sure that the DT&I was taking them up to Zug Island. 
 
Anyway, we run them Kent to Marion with a regular Kent Division crew and then ran Marion to Lima with a east end Huntington crew and then deadheaded the crew to Huntington.  I'm not going to say it didn't happen, but I don't recall getting the empties back in unit trains. 
 
We started having to park them all over the place.  I know we had one sitting in one of the valuable C Yard receiving trakcs for quite some time.  And that was a real problem given there were only three tracks in C Yard.  I also remember getting into an argument with some one in the EL power desk at Cleveland.  He was moaning about getting deqadhead cabooses out of Marion because he needed them to run the coke trains out of the east.  At the same time we had at least two parked on the division so I questioned what the hell was the big rush.  Cause I sure knew I didn't want any more of the damn things till we got rid of the ones we had.  Too bad the EL couldn't have gotten more of this type of business on a steady basis. 
Keith Robbins


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