(The following story by John R. Pulliam appeared on The Register-Mail website on October 20.)
GALESBURG, Ill. — When one talks of progress in Galesburg and west-central Illinois, one of, if not the first company that comes to mind is the BNSF Railway.
Now the largest employer in Knox County, BNSF has about 1,150 employees. Quietly and without much fanfare, the railroad has added hundreds of new jobs since Maytag and Butler Manufacturing cut their ties to the community.
‘It’s probably up between 200 and 250 people,’ BNSF Terminal Superintendent Rick Danielson said in a recent interview in a conference room at the hump tower at the classification yard.
The hub
‘Galesburg is the second largest classification yard in the BNSF system,’ Danielson said.
For many non-railroaders the question may be, what is a classification yard? Box cars and tankers coming into Galesburg from all over the country are grouped together in the classification, or rail yard, to ‘make’ freight trains. The resulting freights are known as merchandise trains.
‘I think the unique thing about Galesburg is we see every type of traffic that moves on the BNSF,’ Danielson said.
Danielson said merchandise trains carry what the name suggests: canned goods, paper, fertilizer, lumber cars, raw materials, etc. Galesburg’s classification yard — a 24/7 operation — has eight receiving tracks and eight departure tracks. In order to see the yard in one’s mind’s eye, first picture hundreds of train cars with a spaghetti-like track design in a bowl-type area. The receiving and departure tracks are on hills, or humps. The 48 classification tracks are in the bowl formed by the hills on each side.
The rail yard is similar to the ‘hubs’ used by airlines. For instance, United has its hub at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Planes from all over the country bring passengers to O’Hare. From there, riders board planes to fly to their final destinations.
The theory for moving freight is much the same. Products are brought into the Galesburg classification yard from across the country. Then, rather than passengers boarding various planes at airports, freight cars headed for all areas of the U.S. are put together to make trains headed for the appropriate destinations.
A trip to the fourth level of the hump tower brings the comparison home. On a recent day, Cindy Godsil, yardmaster Joe Fuelling, trainmaster Chris Ausdenmoore and Lori Armstrong monitor brightly lighted computers that light up the darkened area that closely resembles an air traffic control tower. From their perches high above the tracks, the employees can look out the windows that surround them and watch the trains, much as air traffic controllers watch jets landing and taking off at airports. Computer screens show camera shots giving the employees controlling the movement of the freight cars a closer look at what is going on.
Meanwhile, radio messages and conversation among the four somehow makes everything come together as it should.
There’s plenty of activity, even though as Danielson and a reporter enter the tower, none of the cars are moving.
‘Right now, we’re shut down for maintenance,’ Danielson said. ‘You can see the guys in the orange suits and the umbrellas.’
Far below, what appear to be tiny toy figures walk among the trains in the bowl, assessing the condition of the tracks. Danielson said with the volume that comes through Galesburg, the maintenance is a daily occurrence.
‘With the number of trains we run every day, we have to maintain and inspect our tracks,’ Danielson said.
After asking if trains will be rolling down the hills soon, Danielson gives the reporter an opportunity to watch the results of what is controlled by the employees in the tower. The terminal superintendent points to one of the humps, where a ghost-like figure in an orange jacket walks through the gently falliing mist.
‘He’s going to pull the pin,’ Danielson said of the operation to separate the train cars. Three box cars began moving away from the rest of the freight train, their speed controlled by computer and by ‘retarders,’ braking devices built into the tracks.
‘The objective is to make no more than a 4 mph coupling,’ Danielson said.
Even inside the tower, the screeching sound of the metal train wheels can be heard as retarders slow the cars.
As a number of tank cars began to separate from one another, Danielson asked Fuelling, ‘Is that a batch of soybean oil in the tankers?’
‘I don’t know,’ Fuelling said at first, as Danielson speculated that was the product because it is from ADM. Fuelling checked his computer and said the tankers contained corn syrup.
The tank cars begin coming down the hump, one after another. Some go off onto a track to the left, from the perspective of those in the tower, some go straight down the middle.
Danielson said the work being done in the tower is every bit as difficult as it appears.
‘They’re very talented,’ he said of the crew. ‘They have a lot of experience. I feel very good about our workforce. They’re the best I’ve ever worked with.’
How many trains are ‘made’ daily?
‘On average, about 19 trains a day,’ Danielson said. ‘That means we take in 19 trains and we output 19 trains a day.’
The hub concept was brought home when Danielson explained that, ‘Galesburg is unique, in that we have seven tracks’ coming from all areas of the U.S.
From the Pacific Northwest and California on the West Coast, to Texas in the Southwest, Memphis in the South, Lincoln, Neb., and Denver in the West, and Chicago, which allows freight to be brought here from the East Coast and the Upper Midwest, Galesburg can accommodate it all. In fact, even freight from Canada makes its way to west-central Illinois through the railroad’s operations in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
‘We’ve got different ways we classify the traffic, then we send (the trains) out seven different directions,’ Danielson said.
Long train running
Technology is making it possible for ever longer trains. Danielson said when he started 30 years ago most freights were in the 5,500- to 6,000-foot category, the classic ‘mile-long’ freight. Times have changed.
‘Your average train is running in the 6,500- to 7,000-foot range,’ Danielson said of today’s freights. Trains of up to 8,500 feet are sometimes on the rails. Of course, larger railyards are needed to handle larger trains. Expansion of the receiving yard a few years ago made those trains possible in Galesburg.
‘We want to keep everything moving,’ Danielson said. ‘When you’re talking about a 7,000-foot train, that’s more than a mile. If you stop them, you’re blocking road traffic.’
An advantage to Galesburg’s rural setting is that longer trains can be stopped in the Airport Road/Linwood Road area without blocking crossings.
‘When you get into your larger cities, it gets more difficult,’ Danielson said.
Motorists driving on U.S. 34 and Knox County Highway 40 may have noticed more trains stopped along the tracks, waiting to come into the Galesburg yard. It is not unlike airliners being put into a holding pattern while waiting to land at busy airports.
‘We’re staying very busy,’ Danielson said. ‘That in itself creates some problems. We have to watch the flow of traffic.’
Some lines, such as the ‘Transcom,’ which goes east to west across the country, are less likely to have stopped trains.
‘We try not to hold trains on the Transcom,’ Danielson said. ‘We have high-priority intermodal traffic on there.’
That means that the Mendota Sub, which runs along U.S. 34, is more likely to be the area to ‘stage’ trains. Based on BNSF’s needs and those of other lines, ‘We specifically identify areas where we can hold trains,’ Danielson said.
He said the double tracks in this area also help in keeping train traffic moving. Many areas of the West have single tracks, meaning trains have to be pulled off onto sidings.
But, just as O’Hare and other airports expand, either by lengthening runways or adding slots, more and longer trains may mean a larger rail yard in Galesburg one of these days. But, that’s another story.