Canadian National & Amtrak in Kankakee, Illinois, 20.04.11

Kankakee, Illinois was once a major railroad hub where the Illinois Central, New York Central's Big Four line and NYC's Kankakee Belt Line-- now all owned by Canadian National, Norfolk Southern and Kankakee, Beaverville & Southern, respectively-- crossed and met. All the lines are still here, but have been single-tracked and traffic has dropped off considerably. Now, the largest player here is CN, which has a yard just north of the historic station here, and runs about 40 trains a day on their ex-IC. NS and BNSF use the old NYC line, and KB&S runs one or two trains a day on the old Big Four. Amtrak has 6 trains a day that stop here, including the City of New Orleans, which I spotted here, over 6 hours late due to tornado weather further south.

To start, Amtrak's northbound train #390, the Saluki, is two hours late (also due to the nasty weather downstate) as it departs Kankakee. It departs northbound, pushed by P42DC #26, and crosses NS's Kankakee Belt by the old IC signal bridge.

Next, CN local power that had been waiting in a siding south of the station heads back north to the yard. CN/IC GP38-2 #9619 and Grand Trunk GP38-2 #4934 roll by the station and its small railroad museum on the single track.

Later that afternoon, Amtrak's northbound City of New Orleans is over 6 hours late as it arrives and departs Kankakee, with P42DC #94 leading the standard consist for the train, north to Chicago Union Station. Unfortunately, I was eating lunch at a restaurant downtown as a CN stack train came through southbound just minutes earlier...

~Thanks for watching!~

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• CN
• Canadian National
• GTW
• Grand Trunk Western
• IC
• Illinois Central
• NS
• Kankakee
• IL
• Illinois
• Amtrak
• City of New Orleans
• train
• rail
• passenger
• long-distance
• station
• freight
• yard
• signals
• switcher
• local
• GP38-2
• P42DC

[ConrailSD70MAC]

I'm very surprised to see the gap from the time IC removed the second track in the 1990's. Looks like the track was removed months ago instead of years ago.