South Shore GP38-2s lead a westbound freight on 11th Street on the east side of Michigan City, Ind. BY KEVIN P. KEEFE PHOTOS BY GREG MCDONNELL SOUTH SHORE FREIGHT’SFABULOUS FRANCHISE © 2017 Kalmbach Publishing Co. This material may not be reproduced in any 32 Trains JUNE form2017 without permission from the publisher. www.TrainsMag.com ENGINEER CHARLIE McLemore at the car lengths ... one car length ... that’ll do.” railroad in December 1990. “We’d con- throttle of No. 2001 as AF-2 (Michigan City- Then a muffled bang. vinced the trustee that we were the best op- Kingsbury turn) works Kingsbury Industrial After 90 minutes of switching worthy of tion because we’d built all those other Park at former Kingsbury Ordnance Plant. a Master Model Railroader session, the train deals,” recalls Peter A. Gilbertson, Anacos- is ready. McLemore lets the dispatcher know, tia’s founder and chairman. NICTD, a commuter authority created in receives a friendly “clear” from the voice in The South Shore purchase gave the 1977 by the state of Indiana to represent the South Shore dispatching center a few company a solid foothold for moving fur- Lake, Porter, LaPorte, and St. Joseph coun- hundred feet away, and AF-2 is off, trun- ther into short lines, a mission the compa- ties, the railroad’s basic service area. The COMMUTERS ALIGHT from a three-car dling down the Kingsbury line at 20 mph. ny since has pursued with the acquisition agency began running the trains in 1990. Railroad and today the operations head- NICTD train at Dune Park as a westbound of five other railroads (see page 40). quarters for two railroads. The better South Shore freight waits in the siding. SHORTLINE POWERHOUSE As a privately held firm, Anacostia de- A TRACTION HERITAGE IT’S A DRIZZLY, known of the pair is the Northern Indiana The crisp, efficient work of AF-2’s crew clines to release financial details, although As much as it looks like any contempo- Commuter Transportation District, opera- Easier said than done. Like almost ev- is typical not only of South Shore Freight, South Shore certainly is a key holding. An- rary freight railroad, South Shore’s interur- tor of a jam-packed schedule of South erything around here, the four-track freight but of its owner, Anacostia Rail Holdings. drew Fox, managing director of Anacostia, ban roots are easy to see. The original com- SULTRY 7 A.M. Shore-branded passenger trains, heirs to yard is a holdover from interurban days, Formed in 1985 by consulting firm Ana- describes the Class III railroad as “not quite pany began operating in 1908, when the the railroad’s status as the “last interurban.” when 40-foot boxcars and tiny steeple-cab costia & Pacific, the company participated Class II,” which under current Surface Chicago, Lake Shore & South Bend Railway The other guy in town is the Chicago electric motors were the norm. With to- in several high-profile launches, among Transportation Board guidelines is defined opened service between South Bend and South Shore & South Bend, also known day’s 80-foot cars, room is nil. “This yard is them MidSouth, an Illinois Central spinoff as less than $37.4 million in revenue for Hammond. From the beginning, it was dif- IN AUGUST, simply as South Shore Freight, an industri- always so full, it takes forever,” McLemore now part of Kansas City Southern; and three consecutive years. In 2015, the rail- ferent from most Midwestern interurbans and all is suddenly calm at the crowded lit- ous little railroad that’s an exemplar of the says. “The wet rail isn’t helping.” His cargo Montana Rail Link, still a key partner of road hauled 52,000 carloads, of which because of its high engineering standards tle terminal on the east side of Michigan successful contemporary short line. It’s also for today is plastic pellets, granules for BNSF in Montana. 31,000 were coal. and use of alternating current. It was also City, Ind. A flurry of westbound commuter a crown jewel in the family of companies shingles, and grain. Then, in the late 1980s, as South Shore A compelling fact: When Anacostia ac- ahead of the game when, in 1916, it moved trains departed for Chicago over the past owned by Chicago-based Anacostia Rail After the routine job briefing, the crew staggered through the bankruptcy of its quired South Shore, freight volume was beyond the package business typical of in- hour, leaving every corner of the parking Holdings, a veteran operator in the short- doesn’t say much to each other. They’ve then-owner Venan- about 80 percent coal. Today traffic is evenly terurbans and lot jammed. But the station platform, filled line and regional railroad industry. worked together for years on this weekday go River Corp., An- split between coal and other commodities, a launched carload just moments ago, is deserted. But Charlie McLemore isn’t thinking Michigan City job, known as AF-2. acostia figured it testimonial to the railroad’s marketing ef- freight service. Across the tracks, a phalanx of orange about any of that this morning as he climbs McLemore and Hendrix hired out in 1979, was time to move forts. Of that coal volume, approximately The railroad’s po- diesels is lined up outside a small shop into the cab of GP38-2 No. 2001. He and 38 years ago, a geological age given all the beyond advising half is steam coal for Northern Indiana Pub- tential soared in building, awaiting the day’s work. All of his crew — conductor Brett Hendrix and changes in railroading over the decades. other railroads and lic Service Co., and half is metallurgical coal 1925 when it was ac- them show off a bold orange-and-maroon brakeman Tim Carr — face a tough assign- Carr is the new kid on the block, having actually run some. for steel customer ArcelorMittal. quired by Chicago paint scheme that harkens to a glorious ment: somehow extract a train of nine cars hired out in 1996. Hendrix and Carr already The firm decided to Of course, there’s more to the South tycoon Samuel In- past, even as the logo proclaims a vital out of a gaggle of tank cars and covered have the switch list memorized, so other make a bid to the Shore name than freight. First and foremost, sull, a pioneer of cen- present: South Shore Freight. hoppers crammed into the tiny Carroll Av- than an occasional “Hey, Tim, blow the wa- bankruptcy receiver at least in the public’s mind, South Shore is tralized electric utili- This is Carroll Avenue, ancestral home enue yard, then spend the day working the ter out of your mic!” the conversation is and it won, assum- about electric passenger trains. South Shore ties. Insull already of the Chicago South Shore & South Bend 22 miles of the Kingsbury Branch. limited to the usual “three car lengths ... two ing control of the Freight shares most of its track miles with ran Chicago’s gigantic Andrew Fox Peter A. Gilbertson 34 Trains JUNE 2017 www.TrainsMag.com 35 Commonwealth Edison when he bought the rennial funding battles; it’s part of the terri- railroad. He also controlled Midland Utili- tory. So the commuter railroad looks at ties, which owned several power companies South Shore’s payments as an extra revenue in northern Indiana, and today’s NIPSCO is stream, given that it would have to main- a descendant. tain the railroad anyway. Gilbertson figures Insull saw huge potential in heavy-duty that over the past 26 years the freight rail- electric railroads. Along with the renamed road has paid the commuter authority close Chicago South Shore & South Bend, Insull to $81 million. “That’s money the taxpayer expanded his traction empire by gathering and passenger don’t have to pay,” he says. up the Chicago Aurora & Elgin and the The two railroads’ partnership will come Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee. He in- into play again if two big projects move for- vested millions in these properties, turning ward. Most immediate is a plan to double- all three into ideal specimens of the traction track the 18 miles between Dune Park and industry at its zenith, winning speed awards ON CHICAGO’S FAR SOUTH SIDE, a South Shore freight train passes through the 130th Michigan City, for which the commuter au- and expanding passenger traffic. and Torrence Avenue truss bridge in the Hegewisch neighborhood. The 394-foot-long thority is working on funding. A second However, Insull’s empire began falling bridge was funded by the CREATE partnership and opened in 2015. Keegan Goss track along this bottleneck would pay sig- apart in the early 1930s, and in 1933 South nificant dividends for both passenger and Shore was forced into bankruptcy. But the stewards, their 1986 merger with Seaboard Chessie $4 million for passenger assets and freight service. Also in the works: a plan for railroad’s strategic route, its greatest pedi- System to form CSX Transportation gave the dispatching, and a year later $17 million for improving or eliminating the famed street gree, guaranteed a future. A reorganized short line the status of odd man out. the mainline track. South Shore agreed to running in Michigan City. South Shore succeeded for more than 30 In stepped Venango River Corp., a new pay trackage rights on a standard per-car- years until its 1967 acquisition by Chesa- company riding the wave of deregulation. mile basis. “The first year was complex,” Gil- LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION peake & Ohio, attracted by the region’s surg- Venango made valiant attempts to build bertson says.