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Posted by Ben
on 10/29/2009, 9:40 am
68.40.86.167
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Here are a few pics from Battle Creek in the 90s, during two big projects at Battle Creek Yd.
Emmet St overpass crossed the GTW west end yard throat and main line, which was a real bottleneck. It was almost comical how frequently the crossing was blocked by yard jobs. These are two pictures my dad (Rick Higdon) took in September 96 of the construction of the overpass. Check out how tall those signals were next to the bridge! It looks like the track elevation drops just beyond the signals, I wonder if they were that tall because the elevation change would make shorter signals impossible to see from a distance?
The next year work was started on the main line fuel pad, just east of the overpass. This would allow through trains to refuel without yarding the train and sending the power to the deisel shop. I thought it was a great sign of reinvestment at the time, not realizing the implications for the Battle Creek terminal operation.
Here are two pics by my dad took from the overpass on 8/27/97. The panel track in the middle is on the main line alignment. A westbound freight is sitting on the main in the distance, just beyond the curve into the "shoo-fly". When the yard was first constructed, the main line was only a single track bypassing the yard. Considering this was around 1963, and there were still passenger trains on the line, they must have intended for every train to pass through the yard.
This one I took in summer 98. Looks like the main line is ready for action again and the shoo-fly has been scraped away, although work isn't finished on the facility yet.
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