Monday, June 22, 2015

IHB Crossings

Since I needed to analyze all of the grade crossings of the IHB for prebuilt diamonds, I continued my study of IHB and listed all of the "interesting" points on tracks operated by the IHB. In the following, if the preposition is "over" or "under", it is a grade separated crossing of the indicated railroad. If it is "at", the crossing is at grade and uses diamonds. If it is "across", it is a bridge over the indicated river. And the preposition "pass" indicates an IHB yard or branch.

The major grade crossings have names because historically there would be a staffed tower to control the signals to indicate which train has the right-of-way. Sometimes different sources have different names for the same crossing, thus the square braces. The links are to satellite images of the crossing.

IHB operates tracks East and North of here.


Going East:
Going North:
There are some branches, but it appears that any diamonds in these branches are lightly used.

Satellite
I spent some time analyzing CP 447 because it looked like they have removed the rails of the three track route. I did quite a bit of study to confirm that is the three track mainline of NS to Elkhart, IN. It not only carries a lot of freight into the Chicago area, it carries all of Amtrak trains to the East. (Amtrak trains to Michigan don't leave the NS mainline until Porter Junction.) So there is no way the rails can be abandoned. So why can't I see them? Also note that there is a "blob" at each rail crossing. Since IHB trains are always slow and Amtrak would like to be fast, I wonder if these are OWLS diamonds.

Satellite
I found a passenger train close by convincing me that these tracks still had to be in service even though I could not see any rails around the IHB track.

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