Journal & Topics Media Group

Ramping Up Rail

Elk Grove’s New Short-Line Railroad Operators Find Hidden Rail Yard
Chicago Junction More Aggressively Marketing Rail As Option To Move Freight

Progressive Rail workers shuffle freight cars through the company’s Chicago Junction Railway system in the Elk Grove Business Park yard. (Photo courtesy Progressive Rail)

The Elk Grove Village Business Park is not only served with roads and nearby O’Hare Airport, but a short-line railroad system within the park. After a new company, Progressive Rail Incorporated, took over the lease for the rail system last year, it discovered a second small rail yard in the business park.

Progressive is a short-line railroad company based in Lakeview, MN, that is leasing the Chicago Junction Railway system from Union Pacific. The system contains 16-miles of track within four square miles of the Elk Grove Village Business Park. The Chicago Junction Railway’s main rail yard is located at 2511 Pratt Blvd.

After Progressive took over the lease from Iowa Pacific Railroad in June 2018, workers, some who worked in the Elk Grove train yard for Iowa Pacific, told their new employers about a two-acre area between Busse Road and Lively Boulevard, and between Greenleaf and Lunt avenues, which had become overgrown and unused by Iowa Pacific.

Iowa Pacific used its railyard mostly for storage. Jason Culotta, Progressive’s director of industrial development, said Progressive is taking a much more aggressive approach in marketing the benefits of using rail to deliver raw materials and ship out finished products.

Freight train operated by Progressive Rail Inc., meanders through Elk Grove. (Photo provided by Progressive Rail)

“Since we took over the Chicago Junction Railway on June 1, 2018, we’ve added approximately 500 (freight rail) carloads to the base we inherited,” Culotta said. “On average, we interchange about 15 cars with Union Pacific (fed from tracks serving the country) each day.”

Culotta said when top officials discovered the unused area, brush was cleared and options for how to expand use of the area were explored. He described the tracks in the newly discovered area as forking into something similar to a pitchfork, with one track splitting into two. He said the area has space to add two additional forking tracks.

Chicago Northwestern Railroad built the rail system decades ago. There were plans for a second rail yard, which Culotta said were never realized. The area sat dormant and became overgrown and obscured.

Progressive officials are in talks with village officials to revitalize that area for renewed use. Culotta said Progressive and Chicago Junction Railway are considering two options for the new rail yard: as a transloading facility or to provide more track to move freight.

A transloading facility is where cargo containers are transferred between trucks and rail cars. Culotta said there is not much space for train-to-truck transfers at the company’s Pratt rail yard, leaving transloading as an option at the new site.

The Chicago Junction Railway links to Union Pacific tracks, which provide easy access to Union Pacific routes to the Southern Gulf Coast and West Coast, to tracks owned by Canadian Pacific into Canada, Canadian National with routes to the Gulf Coast, and CSX and Norfolk Southern with access to the East Coast and Southern states.

Transport by rail can become more attractive the longer the distance freight has to be moved.  Culotta said just one rail car can hold the cargo of between three and five trucks. The generally accepted average is four truck loads to one rail car load. Railroad officials said one ton of freight can be moved 500 miles on just one gallon on fuel.

Trucking is also seeing issues with labor. Culotta said the average age of a truck driver is 55-years-old without many new drivers coming into the labor force. He said many drivers are moving away from long haul trucking, saying those drivers, “want to come home at night.”

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