Indiana Harbor Belt and other "terminal railroads"

[cthart]

Hi again,

According to
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the Indiana Harbor Belt is "the largest terminal railroad in the US". What is a terminal railroad?

According to
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they call themselves "the largest switch carrier in the US"...

Can someone describe to me -- in overview -- how this railroad operates?

Thanks,

Colin

[faraway]

The area south of the Lake Michigan between Chicago and Michigan City is a huge industrial area historical serves by many railroads. You will find huge steal industry in the area of Gary. Many of those industries and railroads are interconnected by the IHB.
The other important local RRs in that area are the South Shore and the Belt Railway of Chicago.

[csiguy1970]

Morning Sun Books just came out with a book about the IHB. i got it about 2 weeks ago and its fantastic. it tells you everything you need to know about the IHB . the photos in it are very nice and clear andit is a good quality book that you would expect from Morning Sun. if you like, model, or are interested in steel mills and industry there are a lot of photos in there of them too . its well worth getting.


Todd

[Russ Bellinis]

I think most class 1 railroads have expensive union contracts which make the cost of doing local switching prohibitive. The terminal railroads have either less expensive employee contracts, or are non-union in some cases. They will do switching in specific industrial areas for the class ones at a lower cost. Typically they exist in areas with a concentrated industrial base.

[jwb]

Actually, I'm not sure if there's a single, clear definition of terminal railroad. When passenger service was important, in many cases there were railroads specifically called "terminal railroads" that owned, maintained, and switched union stations. St. Louis, Kansas City, Washington, DC, and Detroit were typical examples: the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis, Kansas City Terminal, Washington Terminal, and Fort Street Union Station. On the other hand, the TRRA did a lot of freight switching, too -- but the Alton and Southern was a similar St Louis railroad that didn't own a passenger terminal. Another common feature of these railroads is that they are, or were, owned by several different Class Is. The Alton and Southern was owned by the C&NW and MP. The Indiana Harbor Belt was owned by the New York Central and the Milwaukee. The Belt Railway of Chicago was owned by a large number of Class Is. The Chicago and Western Indiana served Dearborn Street Station in Chicago and did some of the passenger and local terminal switching, though not all of it, as the Santa Fe did its own.

On the other hand, you could have a union station without a terminal railroad: Los Angeles and Chicago, for instance. The Pennsylvania Railroad stations in Baltimore and Pittsburgh were called "union stations", but only because separate corporate predecessors of the PRR did at one time call there -- in the 20th century, they were just PRR stations. The Elgin, Joliet and Eastern was similar to the IHB but owned by US Steel, as was the Union Railroad in Pittsburgh, another urban/industrial switching line.

For that matter, getting a little farther afield, I've seen lines like the New Haven and the Boston and Maine described as "terminal railroads" on a larger scale -- after World War II, they didn't originate much traffic and simply delivered incoming freight in New England.

So I don't think there's a single definition, though they all have some features in common.

[steinjr]

Actually, I'm not sure if there's a single, clear definition of terminal railroad.

The AAR (Association of American Railroads) defines a "terminal and switching railroad" as "A non-Class I railroad engaged primarily in switching and/or terminal services for other railroads" in lists of railroads. A similar definition can be found in their Car Hire Rules (http://www.aar.org/~/media/aar/CarRules/397.ashx).

Smile,
Stein

[Mike Kieran]

Couldn't we also say that a terminal railroad can also be a railroad owned by several others in order to reduce the expense of owning the said terminal railroad. A terminal railroad also cuts down on the redundancy of track in a given geographical location.

[jwb]

But keep in mind that there are non-Class I railroads that perform switching service in terminal areas that are not owned by multiple railroads. The Los Angeles Junction is wholly owned by BNSF. The former Illinois Northern, a switching line in Chicago, was owned only by ATSF, and before that by International Harvester. There were a number of US Steel terminal railroads that sometimes also switched steel mills, but not necessarily.

Life just ain't like that!

[Mike Kieran]

Thanks for that jwb, I realized that I didn't have all of my message there. I just edited it.

I agree, all of the reasons can be valid as well as railroads that just put terminal in their corporate name, even though they aren't (such as Quincy Bay Terminal).

[paulus_jas]

Hi,
maybe the original question was misleading. The Indiana Harbour Belt's main function was that of an interchange road. All major RR-companies operated once upon a time in and out of Chicago, so Windy City became the spot were cars were interchanged. A railroad connecting all the RR's with their own terminal in Chicago became mandatory.
Of course, also along the IHB, industrial area's were built. Selling the ground around the tracks probably paid for the construction of the IHB. So our IHB became a Terminal Road as well, serving industries along its route.
Names like Terminal Road or Bridge Route are often refering to their main function at a certain time, probably when they were built. Or just refering to the hopes of their founders. I would call the IHB a Belt Line (or an Interchange Line), not a Terminal Road
Paul

[nkp_174]

In general, freight cars handled by a Terminal railway would terminate their journey...or start it...on the Terminal railway. A Belt Railway, by contrast, existed to connect the various railroads which entered a city but didn't physically connect to each other. Here in Cincinnati, we didn't have any Belt or Terminal railroads as every Class I railroad had a physical connection with a majority of the others or trackage rights for this purpose. As I recall, Chicago had 40+ railroads, most of which terminated at Chicago and didn't connect to anywhere near all of the others, so it needed Belt Railways to connect them. This allowed a shipper to choose, between Denver and Chicago, between the numerous parallel (competing) roads.

Most railroads did have Terminal operations, but not necessarily at every city. By contrast, a Bridge Route was a railroad which didn't really have Terminal operations, gaining most of its traffic via interchange and Belt Railways. The Nickel Plate Road was a particularly good example of this...as it hauled long trains of California Reefers destined for the East Coast at 60mph behind its berkshires which it received at Chicago and delivered to Buffalo.

My prototype of choice is the Oahu Railway (Hawaii). Its terminal operation was Honolulu. All railroad cars were loaded or emptied at Honolulu (everything either started or terminated its rail journey at Honolulu). As I recall, approximately 20% of the cost of operating the railroad went to the Honolulu terminal...the other 80% was the 70 miles of mainline and 20 miles of branch lines. The Terminal operations in Honolulu consisted of: freight cars delivering/receiving loads from ships and warehouses, delivering/receiving loads from the various industries in the terminal area (fertilizer, oil/gas/diesel fuel, lumber, tin cans, pineapples, meat, and raw sugar), delivering LCL freight to the team tracks, and the breaking down/assembling passenger trains that 3-track stub passenger terminal.

While many European nations had State Railways, the US has had 337 Class I railroads...almost entirely privately owned (an exception would be the Cincinnati Southern which is owned by my city but operated by NS). Belt and Terminal RRs worked with these Class Is, originating traffic which they would interchange to the Class I's. For most of the 20th century, the ICC's rules for interchange rewarded origination of freight more than just hauling it, so Terminal RRs did quite well despite hauling the freight for less than 1% of its journey.

[railohio]

March 1986 issue of TRAINS has a good article on the IHB.

[Puddlejumper]

One reason for the existence of terminal railroads that is not mentioned is this: When multiple railroads serve the same geographical area they are forced to either own there own trackage in that area, creating multiple duplications of rail routings by several carriers, or they are forced to rely on competing roads to forward their cars for them to their destination, in good faith on their behalf. Sometimes a road might be somewhat lackadaisical in forwarding a competing roads cars, putting less importance on the competing shipments than their own. Even if exercising trackage rights, a dispatcher on a competing road may give priority to home road trains. A terminal railroad that is owned in part by each parent railroad, gives equal treatment to all cars regardless of which home road they come from, or where they are going.

[Mike Kieran]

Dave, that was also mentioned above on December 6.