Jacksonville, IL

Post merger, KCS makes its way up the Jack Line with a cut of cars for Reynolds (formerly Mobil Plastics) – Photo by Ryan Crawford

 

Jacksonville, IL was home to a Mobil Plastics manufacturing plant and an interchange with the Burlington Northern railroad.

The large Mobil facility had 4 spurs for unloading and a siding for storage.  The facility, at any moment, would have upwards of 20 covered hoppers of polyethylene and polypropylene on site.  At times the facility would store loads at both Roodhouse and Woodson, IL prior to delivery.

The interchange with the Burlington Northern was used primarily for the delivery of tank cars of vegetable oil destined for Anderson Clayton foods on the east side of Jacksonville. This oil would be used in the production of Salad Dressing and Margarine.

Today the plastics plant is still in operation for Reynolds, and while the interchange with the now BNSF is still there, the Anderson Clayton plant is closed and the interchange is rarely used.

 

KCS LRH101 runs around its train for the journey back to Roodhouse – Photo by Ryan Crawford

Action at Roodhouse.

Photo by Joe Blackwell (September 1995)

 

This is a great snapshot of the type action seen at Roodhouse, and a lot can be taken from this photo.

We see GP38 2032 working the north yard at Roodhouse while the three times a week KCSL manifest is working the yard as well.  I would guess the switcher is working a block of cars for Curran based on the open hoppers which I would assume are destined to the pit at Curran.  I might need some direction from yall, but I think the tank car might be liquid fertilizer for Curran as well.  For the small size of Roodhouse, the Gateway really managed to squeeze quite a bit of operation into the space.

Another item to note is the lone TOFC car at the head end of the KCSL.  I do not know the exact date, but around the end of 1994 – beginning of 1995, the Gateway Western re-opened its intermodal ramp at the old 12th Street Yard in the West Bottoms of Kansas City.  The state of the art facility featured a gravel ramp with a flat car minus one truck that was buried into the ground forming a ramp up.  If memory serves me right, they also had a Mi-Jack crane on the property as well.  This was an early attempt to prepare for the forthcoming BNSF merger.  The Gateway Western sought to build its own intermodal base up in conjunction mainly with Conrail as a form of protection against the potentially lost traffic a BN-ATSF merger would cause.

Roodhouse, IL

Roodhouse, IL was a busy secondary hub for the Gateway Western.  In addition to the Roodhouse local, the SLJV/JVSL local and KCSL/SLKC manifests stopped to work the yard.  The Santa Fe haulage trains were not supposed to stop, but I have been told that the Gateway might have slipped a car or two onto those trains if needed!

I’ve attached a map given to me by John Kohlberg, who worked for the Gateway.  As we look at the map, the top edge is directionally south with line at the bottom exiting north. The area remains unchanged to this day with the exception of the removal of the “New Main” between Simmons and Palm streets.  See the below link for a better visual of the area south of Palm St.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Roodhouse,+IL+62082/@39.4823947,-90.3750289,267m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x87dfa3553e6deee5:0xa2b140cfbb10acc4

 

There was no industry directly in Roodhouse, and work was limited to yard duty.  However, just south of town there was one Gateway served industry, Greene County Service, which received fertilizer in covered hoppers.  The industry was served by a mix of jobs.  Sometimes the SLJV would switch Greene County on it northbound journey, but depending on timing, the Roodhouse local or a switcher based in Roodhouse would head south of town to take care of the customer.

Between assignments power would lay over on the New Main just south of the 2 track.  On the south end of the complex, switching was performed on the 2 and 3 tracks.  The 7 track was predominately used for MOW storage.  The north end of Roodhouse saw switching and car storage.  The Short 10 was most often used for pickups and setouts.  The 12 and 15 tracks were often used for storage.

On my layout I should be able to include all trackage in Roodhouse with exception of the wye track, which will be omitted to save space since the Kansas City – St. Louis main will not be modeled.  The south section will be located on a shelf down a 10ft segment of wall.  The north side will curve around onto the 16ft wall, but I am not sure how long I will make the tracks.  Roodhouse should keep a single operator busy switching the yard as well as handling pickups and setouts from KCSL and SLKC.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions.  I hope to make it up to Roodhouse soon, and will post some current pictures for reference.

 

Welcome!

Welcome to this experiment of mine!  I wanted to take a stab at documenting the construction of my Gateway Western layout.

After many hours of planning and a lot of input from friend Joe Atkinson, I have come up with a solid roadmap for the project.  With my 10 x 15 x 26 foot space, the around the walls layout will feature the Gateway’s Roodhouse, IL yard along with a combined Murrayville/Prouty, IL, and the Curran, IL Consolidated Grain & Barge elevator.

Much like many of my friends and compatriot’s layouts, the layout will have a heavy focus on prototypical operation.  I look forward to using this blog to illustrate the interesting operation of what on the surface often appears as boring, run of the mill branch line.

Hopefully y’all will enjoy – feel to ask questions on anything.