A typical road set leaves Waukegan, IL in March, 1974 with a train. Generally, between 20 and 40 cars would leave Waukegan on most road trains. The ruling grade out of Waukegan began here, a few yards past South Yard, and there was a fallacy that if you could get out of Waukegan, you could make it to Joliet. It was a fallacy for two reasons: one, sometimes a switcher, usually EJ&E 477 or 478, would have to shove the train out of town (the SW1s could barely bunch the slack) and, two, most road trains filled at both Rondout (Milwaukee Road interchange)and Leithton (Soo Line interchange) swelling the train to 75-100 cars or more, making the grade out of Leithton the real challenge.
