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Union Pacific - Illmo to Dexter, MO

Union Pacific - Illmo to Dexter, MO

For nearly 100 years the Missouri Pacific and the Southern Pacific’s Cotton Belt subsidiary competed for business between the St. Louis gateway and the Southwest, sharing each other’s track between East St. Louis and Dexter, Missouri. Today, Union Pacific owns both lines and traffic has begun growing again after dropping during the great recession, spurred on by unit trains of crude oil headed to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Trains are getting longer and heavier with some having radio controlled distributed power fore and aft. Foreign power abounds as UP and its eastern connections pool power on many trains. In addition BNSF has overhead rights on this line to East St. Louis. This program shows all the trains in October of 2013 for over twenty-four hours on the critical single track portion of UP’s Chester Subdivision south of East St. Louis between Illmo on the Mississippi River and Dexter in southeast Missouri. Dexter is where the lines divide and directional running to Texas begins. The traffic on this line is extremely varied with manifests toting chemicals from the Gulf Coast, trains carrying autos and auto parts for auto distribution centers and assembly plants in Texas and Mexico, the Texas and Mexico intermodal fleet to and from Chicago, and many types of unit trains clogging this single track section as you will see. This is the same stretch of track covered nineteen years ago in our program titled “River Wars I – the Mississippi River”. "Union Pacific - Illmo to Dexter, MO" is 2 hours and 24 minutes in length and is a two disk set. It can be watched with or without narration.

Price: $38.95