Kellar Branch

Settlement in the works on Kellar Branch conversion

 

Pioneer Industrial Railway (PIRY) has filed a status report with the Surface Transportation Board that is very interesting.  The report (filed by Daniel LaKemper, general counsel for PIRY) starts by telling the STB what we already know:
This is to advise the Board that on July 14, 2005 Pioneer Industrial Railway Co. and the City of Peoria reached an agreement regarding the track work that the City desired to do on the Kellar Branch, thus eliminating the City’s immediate concerns as to the timely completion of their grant work.
This was reported in the paper and discussed in a previous post.  But, it then goes on to say this:
PIRY and the City are also exploring settlement options that would allow Pioneer Park shippers to retain the connections they currently have to the line-haul railroads coming into Peoria. We will keep the Board apprised of this matter.
Connections to “line-haul railroads” is what I talked about in my last post — the fact that Pioneer Park shippers currently have access to eight major shippers, and the new connection to the west gives them access to only one.  I believe this is the main obstacle for STB approval of the city’s adverse discontinuance request. 
It appears that Pioneer and the city are now trying to work out a way to solve that problem, presumably in such a way that the Kellar Branch can still be turned into an extension of the Rock Island Trail.  I’m not sure how this would be possible, but a railfan friend of mine has some ideas.  He explains it in a lot of technical jargon, but basically it could involve the city’s shipper (Central Illinois Railroad Co., or CIRY, which is owned by DOT Rail out of LaSalle) entering into some sort of haulage agreement with Union Pacific – that is, CIRY using tracks owned by UP to make deliveries to Pioneer Park via the western spur.
I’m skeptical that this would be cost effective in the long run — I would expect UP to keep raising rates for use of their tracks, thus making rail shipping progressively more expensive for anyone out in Pioneer Park.  But we’ll just have to wait and see what kind of settlement Pioneer and the city cook up.  Stay tuned!

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