Mondelez/Nabisco Chicago and Naperville plants are still rail served

Neither plant ships via rail anymore, but both still receive bulk supplies via rail. BRC serves the Chicago Plant, and BNSF/CB&Q serves the Naperville Plant.

Naperville

(Satellite)  Google Maps seems to be broken this week. It is not offering a 3D view nor street views from Ogden. The photos on the map site imply that this plant makes Oreos. But I don't believe that is true because they were made in the Chicago plant described below. I have read a comment that indicated this plant makes Post cereals. I have also read that the Millennials don't eat near as much cold cereals as the Baby Boomers did. (Update: per an Anonymous comment below, this plant has been making Triscuts for over a decade. It is good to know that when Niagara Falls lost the production of Triscuits, the jobs stayed in American instead of going to Mexico.)

The plant is well landscaped in front so trees hide an overall view of the front of the plant. But the main building is tall enough that you can see above the Land Rover dealer that it still has its Nabisco signs even though it is now owned by Mondelez. You can barely see the second sign on the stairway enclosure on the right.

trips/buildings/nabisco/Naperville 3556 taken 20160716

Satellite images show the shipping spur has been paved over for use by trucks, but the receiving spur still serves two leads into the building. Note the yellow fall projector over the northern lead.

Satellite

I drove around the (big) block to see what I could find concerning its rail service. From Jefferson Avenue I could see the fall protector and a covered hopper car. There are storage silos behind the trees on the right.

I've seen a reference to delivering wheat, not flour, to the plant. So I digitally zoomed in on the hopper car. It has three bays instead of five, so it is a delivering wheat instead of flour. That means the plant does its own milling. That would explain why it has so many storage silos compared to Pepperidge Farm that receives flour and normally pneumatically transfers the flour from a car directly to its baking machinery.

This is the best view I got of the silos from the road.

Once again, a satellite image is more useful. Not only is there a hidden eleventh silo, the hoses going to each silo indicate they a pneumatically loaded.

Statellite

Satellite

In my drive around the "block," I pulled into a parking lot to take a photo (below) of the south side of a cut of four cars. A satellite image (right) also has four cars on the spur between the receiving lead and Jefferson Avenue. The tall trees in the background of the photo mark where a remnant of the shipping lead still exists. Stephen Schmidt in a comment on one of my Facebook postings explained: "305 is up there five nights a week to spot wheat loads. Pretty large customer for Eola."

BNSF now uses the remnant of the shipping lead as their "Nabisco Yard." Here we see the ballast regulator and tamper of a tie replacement crew parked in that yard. There is a lot more equipment hidden by the trees that is parked further down on the lead.

20181025 6526

While I was in the corner of a parking lot, I caught the turnout for the receiving lead and the north side of a cut of seven hoppers parked on the spur. The jointed track is getting rather wavy.

Since I'm a railfan, not a shiny-sheet-metal-in-front-of-a-train fan, here is the entire photo where we can see a stack of jointed rail on the left side and a couple of ribbons on the right.

Those ribbons look like they are about 150' long, which means they probably came from a crossing replacement. Below, on the left side of the photo, are the rails they pulled off M1 on Nov 8, 2018 from the Main Street crossing in Downers Grove, IL. The flexibility of even heavyweight rail continues to amaze me. (I'm sure that BNSF installs only their best rail on the Racetrack because commuters and Amtrak run 70mph through here and a lot of heavy freight runs at 40mph.)

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I deliberately turned my camera to the left to take the above photo that included the scrap rail after I took this photo that included the replacement track for the M3 work.

Since the receiving leads cross the driveway to the shipping docks, David caught an up close view of #2380. Of particular note is the Remote Control Equipment sign under the number. I did not know that BNSF (actually, their unions) allows remote control. It is quite common within companies that have their own locomotive such as the steel mills in Northwest Indiana. The H1 livery means that it is an older model. The Diesel Shop indicates #2380 is a GP38-2 built in 1978. Local freights are the railroading equivalent of putting a horse out to pasture because they spend most of their time idling or going slow and because they don't stray too far away from repair shops. I've even seen photos of Sante Fe and BN liveries in local trains.

David Miller

Chicago Plant

(Nabisco Satellite; Mondelez Satellite)

If you look through the photos on the satellite pages, you will see shipping containers parked at the loading bays (e.g. Hug Group). So this plant probably ships some product over 500 miles away. I wonder if it supplies the entire country. But it looks like they still receive corn syrup (grey tank cars) and flour (white hoppers) in bulk by rail. (I don't know what would be in the black tank car and the red, 3-bay hopper car.)

Nick Hart posted

The South Chicago Job has finished its air test and is on the move at Kedzie Avenue in Chicago, a little east of Hayford Junction. With a big train, a pair of hard working SD40-3's was just what the doctor ordered. In the background, the Nabisco Bakery Job can be seen preparing to tie onto its pick-up with a GP23-ECO in charge. Once tied on, the Bakery Job would make the short trip back home to Clearing Yard.

February 2nd, 2016

I wonder if they have their own switcher because the track next to the plant is just a staging area. The flour is unloaded inside the plant.

Satellite

Mondelez bought Nabisco, but they have been slow to change the signs on their buildings because Americans recognize the Nabisco brand. If they do recognize Mondelez, it is probably because they built new Oreo Cookie production lines in Mexico instead of in this plant. Plus, it has to be expensive to replace that sign on the side of the building. The move of Oreo production to Mexico in 2016 caused about half of the 1,200 workers to be laid off. The cookie was first made in New York City in 1912, and this plant had been churning them out since 1953.

Yoshi Shima

But they are changing the signs that are cheap to change.

Ryan Logan

Ken Schmidt posted
Taking lunch at the "cookie", BRC 526's crew will finish their work at Nabisco in December 1988. Nabisco is on the SW side, east of BRC's Clearing yard.