Union Pacific’s Texas Chemical Coast Mains

Refineries and chemical plants along the Texas Gulf Coast stretching from Orange, Texas on the Louisiana border to Kingsville, just below Corpus Christi produce over two-thirds of the country’s  petrochemical output.  The railroad heart of Texas’s Chemical Coast is the two rail lines that run between Houston and Beaumont, a distance of eighty five miles.  This program shows over twenty-four hours of action on both of those lines in late April and early May of 2017 – first the former Missouri Pacific line, now UP’s Beaumont Subdivision, and then the former Southern Pacific line, now UP’s Houston sub.  Kansas City Southern trains running between Laredo on the Mexican border and Shreveport, Louisiana or Jackson, Mississippi have overhead rights on these lines as does BNSF, both from conditions in the UP-SP merger in 1996.  UP began directional running on these lines in 1998 as part of their improvements to get out from under their meltdown in Texas which lasted nearly a year.  Train movements on the Beaumont sub are nearly always eastbound including Amtrak’s Sunset Limited.  While movements on UP’s Houston sub are predominately westbound, the directionality is complicated by trains running both ways from Englewood and Settgast Yards to Dayton where UP’s busy Baytown branch begins and where BNSF has their key yard for sorting manifest traffic in the Houston area.  In contrast to the Beaumont sub, the Houston sub has many customers requiring service from locals. This video is a two disk set and its length is 2 hours, 39 minutes.  This program can be watched with or without narration