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Wisconsin Central Limited
Wisconsin Central Ltd. is a railroad subsidiary of Canadian National. At one time, its parent Wisconsin Central Transportation Corporation owned or operated railroads in the United States, Canada (Algoma Central Railway), the United Kingdom ( English Welsh & Scottish), New Zealand (Tranz Rail), and Australia (Australian Transport Network). Overview Wisconsin Central Ltd. (WC) started in US in the mid-1980s using most of the original Wisconsin Central Railway's rights of way and some former Milwaukee Road rights of way after the Soo Line Railroad acquired the Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Minnesota holdings of the bankrupt Milwaukee Road and divested its older railway trackage in Wisconsin. In 1993 the Wisconsin Central also acquired the Green Bay and Western Railroad and the Fox River Valley Railroad. In 1995, Wisconsin Central acquired the Canadian Algoma Central Railway whose tracks ran north of Sault Saint Marie to Hearst, Ontario. The Algoma Central run ...
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EMD SD45
The SD45 is a six-axle diesel-electric locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between 1965 and 1971. It has an EMD 645E3 twenty-cylinder engine generating on the same frame as the SD38, SD39, SD40, and SDP40. As of 2022, most SD45s have been retired, scrapped or rebuilt to SD40-2 standards. Design 1,260 were built for American railroads before the SD45-2 replaced it in 1972, along with the related SD45T-2 'Tunnel Motor'. SD45s had several teething problems. Reliability was not as high as anticipated; the twenty-cylinder prime mover was prone to crankshaft failure from engine block flex. Though it produced more than the 16-645E3 in the SD40, some railroads felt the extra horsepower wasn't worth it, even after EMD strengthened the block to eliminate crankshaft failures. At low speeds, when tractive effort was adhesion-limited, the SD45 provided no advantage over the SD40. Buyers included the Burlington Northern, Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, Pennsylvani ...
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Australian Transport Network
Australian Transport Network (ATN) was a freight railway operator in Australia that commenced operating in November 1997. The company operated narrow gauge trains in Tasmania and standard gauge trains in New South Wales and Victoria. It was formed as a joint venture with Tranz Rail owning 67% and Wisconsin Central 33%. In February 2004, ATN was sold to Pacific National. AN Tasrail In August 1997, ATN was announced as the successful bidder for Australian National's Tasrail operation in Tasmania with the handover occurring on 1 November 1997. In 1998, Tasrail purchased the Emu Bay Railway from Pasminco. The president of Wisconsin Central, Ed Burkhardt dispatched Mark Rosner to Australia to take control in Tasmania. Amongst Rosner's achievements was the implementing of a new condensed Operating Rule Book, which eliminated some more complex practices in favour of vastly simplified procedures. Single car roadside freight was resumed where customers required it (discontinued und ...
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Rail Tracks
A railway track (British English and UIC terminology) or railroad track (American English), also known as permanent way or simply track, is the structure on a railway or railroad consisting of the rails, fasteners, railroad ties (sleepers, British English) and ballast (or slab track), plus the underlying subgrade. It enables trains to move by providing a dependable surface for their wheels to roll upon. Early tracks were constructed with wooden or cast iron rails, and wooden or stone sleepers; since the 1870s, rails have almost universally been made from steel. Historical development The first railway in Britain was the Wollaton Wagonway, built in 1603 between Wollaton and Strelley in Nottinghamshire. It used wooden rails and was the first of around 50 wooden-railed tramways built over the next 164 years. These early wooden tramways typically used rails of oak or beech, attached to wooden sleepers with iron or wooden nails. Gravel or small stones were packed around t ...
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Illinois Central Railroad
The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, was a railroad in the Central United States, with its primary routes connecting Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama. A line also connected Chicago with Sioux City, Iowa (1870). There was a significant branch to Omaha, Nebraska (1899), west of Fort Dodge, Iowa, and another branch reaching Sioux Falls, South Dakota (1877), starting from Cherokee, Iowa. The Sioux Falls branch has been abandoned in its entirety. The Canadian National Railway acquired control of the IC in 1998, and merged its operations in 1999. Illinois Central continues to exist as a paper railroad. History The IC was one of the oldest Class I railroads in the United States. The company was incorporated by the Illinois General Assembly on January 16, 1836. Within a few months Rep. Zadok Casey (D-Illinois) introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives authorizing a land grant to the compa ...
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North Central Service
The North Central Service (NCS) is a Metra commuter rail line running from Union Station in downtown Chicago through northwestern and far northern suburbs to Antioch, Illinois. In June 2018, the public timetable shows 10 weekday departures from Chicago. This line does not run at all on weekends or holidays. While Metra does not explicitly refer to any of its eleven routes by colors, the NCS' timetable accents are lavender, a shade of purple. It is one of two Metra lines that does not have a specific color for a fallen flag railroad that used to operate on the route. Between Union Station and , the North Central Service shares tracks with the Milwaukee District West Line, but does not stop at any of the intermediate stations used by the MD-W between and River Grove. About a mile west of River Grove, this route turns north at a junction known as tower B-12. The rest of the route operates on the Canadian National Railway's Waukesha Subdivision. Until 2020, a single daily inbound ...
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Waukesha Subdivision
The Waukesha Subdivision or Waukesha Sub is a railway line owned and operated by the Canadian National Railway. It meets the Neenah Subdivision to the north in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and runs south to Chicago, Illinois. History Construction of the line started in 1882 by the Wisconsin Central Railroad and was completed in 1886. The railroad was reorganized from bankruptcy in 1897 and became the Wisconsin Central Railway. The Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad (Soo Line) gained control in 1901 and leased the WC in 1902. The Soo Line operated the WC as its Chicago Division. After the 1961 Soo Line-WC- DSS&A merger that created the Soo Line Railroad, the railroad reduced the number of its operating divisions from five to three; the Schiller Park to Fond du Lac segment became the Soo Line's First Subdivision of the Eastern Division. After the Soo Line acquired the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (Milwaukee Road) in the bankruptcy auction, ...
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Metra
Metra is the commuter rail system in the Chicago metropolitan area serving the city of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs via the Union Pacific Railroad, BNSF Railway, and other railroads. The system operates 242 stations on 11 rail lines. It is the fourth busiest commuter rail system in the United States by ridership and the largest and busiest commuter rail system outside the New York City metropolitan area. In , the system had a ridership of , or about per weekday as of . The estimated busiest day for Metra ridership occurred on November 4, 2016—the day of the Chicago Cubs 2016 World Series victory rally. Metra is the descendant of numerous commuter rail services dating to the 1850s. The present system dates to 1974, when the Illinois General Assembly established the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) to consolidate all public transit operations in the Chicago area, including commuter rail. The RTA's creation was a result of the anticipated failure of commuter ...
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Agawa Canyon
The Agawa Canyon is a shallow canyon located deep in the sparsely populated Algoma District in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It was created 1.2 billion years ago by faulting along the Canadian Shield and then enlarged by the erosive action of the Agawa River. The Agawa Canyon Wilderness Park is only accessible by hiking trail or the Agawa Canyon station on the Algoma Central Railway, and is located by rail north west of Sault Ste. Marie. Geography At their highest point, the walls of the Agawa Canyon rise above the river. The park is situated in the transitional zone between the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Forest region and the Boreal Forest, with diverse and numerous representative flora from both regions present in the canyon. Annual snowfall in the canyon exceeds , with a record snowfall of recorded during the winter of 1989. Four waterfalls dot the canyon's rim and feed the Agawa River. The North and South Black Beaver Falls are high. The tallest waterfall in ...
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Fox River Valley Railroad
The Fox River Valley Railroad was a short-lived railroad in eastern Wisconsin, US from 1988 to 1993 with about 214 miles of track, all of which was former Chicago and North Western Railway trackage. The line ran from Green Bay, Wisconsin, to the north side of Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee .... Owned by the Itel Rail Corporation, FRVR had problems from the start, plagued by big debt and little revenue. FRVR and sister railroad Green Bay and Western were eventually absorbed by the Wisconsin Central on August 28, 1993, as a subsidiary, Fox Valley and Western Ltd. The railroad was known for its paint scheme and its extensive roster of former Chicago and North Western geeps. The Fox River Valley Railroad actually began to take shape more than 100 years e ...
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Green Bay And Western
The Green Bay and Western Railroad served central Wisconsin for almost 100 years before it was absorbed into the Wisconsin Central in 1993. For much of its history the railroad was also known as the Green Bay Route. At the end of 1970 it operated 255 miles of road on 322 miles of track; that year it reported 317 million ton-miles of revenue freight. History The Green Bay and Western Railroad was formed in 1896 from the bankruptcy proceedings of the Green Bay, Winona & St Paul and the Kewaunee, Green Bay and Western. The existing route, originally built by the Green Bay and Lake Pepin Railroad, linking Green Bay, Wisconsin, and East Winona, Wisconsin, formed the bulk of the new railroad. The Green Bay and Western acquired on August 1, 1906 a majority of shares/interest in the Ahnapee and Western Railway. The GBW established in 1929 the Western Refrigerator Line Company (WRX) to operate a 500-car fleet of reefers. Passenger traffic ceased in April 1949. The Line had ca ...
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Soo Line Railroad
The Soo Line Railroad is the primary United States railroad subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway , one of seven U.S. Class I railroads, controlled through the Soo Line Corporation. Although it is named for the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad (MStP&SSM), which was commonly known as the Soo Line after the phonetic spelling of Sault, it was formed in 1961 by the consolidation of that company with two other CP subsidiaries: The Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railway, and the Wisconsin Central Railway. It is also the successor to other Class I railroads, including the Minneapolis, Northfield and Southern Railway (acquired 1982) and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (Milwaukee Road, acquired at bankruptcy in 1985). On the other hand, a large amount of mileage was spun off in 1987 to Wisconsin Central Ltd., now part of the Canadian National Railway. The Soo Line Railroad and the Delaware and Hudson Railway, CP's other major subsidiar ...
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Milwaukee Road
The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (CMStP&P), often referred to as the "Milwaukee Road" , was a Class I railroad that operated in the Midwest and Northwest of the United States from 1847 until 1986. The company experienced financial difficulty through the 1970s and 1980s, including bankruptcy in 1977 (though it filed for bankruptcy twice in 1925 and 1935, respectively). In 1980, it abandoned its Pacific Extension, which included track in the states of Montana, Idaho, and Washington. The remaining system was merged into the Soo Line Railroad , a subsidiary of Canadian Pacific Railway , on January 1, 1986. Much of its historical trackage remains in use by other railroads. The company brand is commemorated by buildings like the historic Milwaukee Road Depot in Minneapolis and preserved locomotives such as Milwaukee Road 261 which operates excursion trains. History Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Minneapolis Railroad The railroad that became the Milwaukee R ...
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