Freight Car Interchange Standards and Richard's Brick

Steven Gray posted

Steven's comment:

Captive service cars on the Clover Leaf. When the line in Edwardsville was still active the NS would make occasional deliveries of brick clay to Richard's Brick. The clay pit would load cars in the Belleville area and NS handled the cars exclusively so there was no need to interchange the cars. Because of this the cars they used were minimally maintained and some of them still even carried NKP markings well in to the 90s. These might have been the shortest (unit trains) the NS operated.

By seeing a couple of cars that have not been maintained to interchange standards, it makes you appreciate that a car does have to be in relatively good shape to be handed off to a different railroad.

Trying to figure out how cars would get between Belleville, IL, and Richard's Brick forced me to learn a little about the greater St. Louis area. From Belleville, they would use NS's former Southern route to go towards the metro-area to turn north on the former Venice & Carondelet Belt, which was a subsidiary of Southern. Where the V&C crossed the former NKP (Cloverleaf), it would take the NKP away from the metroarea because it went right next to their plant.

I wonder how much truck traffic now goes on IL-159 and E Schwarz St. because it looks like Richard's Brick is still an active site.