Illinois Terminal Railroad
standard gauge |
The Illinois Terminal Railroad Company (
History
ITC was a successor in interest to a series of interurban railroads that were consolidated in the early 1900s by businessman William B. McKinley into the Illinois Traction System (ITS), an affiliate of the Illinois Power and Light Company. The Illinois Traction System, at its height, provided electric passenger rail service to 550 miles (900 km) of tracks in central and southern Illinois.[1] The system's Y-shaped main line stretched from St. Louis to Springfield, Illinois, with branches onward from Springfield northwest to Peoria and eastward to Danville. A series of affiliated street-level city trolley lines provided local passenger service in many of the cities served by the main line. The longest-lived segment was at East St. Louis area of the line descended from an Edwardsville-Alton interurban line bought by the Illinois Traction System in 1928. Because the Illinois Traction/Illinois Terminal traversed some towns on street trackage with very tight turns, freight operation required the use of short trains and special hardware. New bypass trackage was constructed around some towns for freight operation to partially solve this problem. Springfield was an example of this. In a few other towns, arrangements were made with a parallel steam railroad for trackage rights in order to provide a bypass. An example of difficult town running (for the town as well as the railroad) was at Morton, Illinois, just east of Peoria, where a heavy duty well maintained track with trolley catenary suddenly found itself running down the center of the town's brick paved main street.
Interurban Routes
- 1 Danville-Ridge Farm (1901-1936)
- 2 Danville-Catlin (1902-1939)
- 3 Homer Branch (1904-1929)
- 4 Danville-Champaign (1902-1953)
- 5 Champaign-Decatur (1907-1955)
- 6 Decatur-Springfield (1904-1955)
- 7 Decatur-Bloomington (1905-1953)
- 8 Bloomington-Peoria (1907-1953)
- 9 Peoria-Springfield (1906-1956)
- 10 Springfield-Granite City (1904-1956)
- 11 Granite City-St. Louis (1910-1958)
- 12 Staunton-Hillsboro (1905-1935)
Decline
With the
In the 1950s, with the rise of the
Because the ITR had some valuable trackage and lineside freight customers, it was acquired in June 1956 by nine
Modern operations in St. Louis, Missouri
In 1989, IT's successor Norfolk Southern sold IT's remaining active trackage in St. Louis, Missouri from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch building at 900 North Tucker Boulevard to the Branch Street Yard located immediately to the south of the McKinley Bridge to Ironhorse Resources, Inc., of O'Fallon, IL. Ironhorse formed a subsidiary for its St. Louis operation known as the Railroad Switching Service of Missouri (RSM). RSM existed to provide freight service to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which received boxcars loaded with newsprint spools that were delivered to an underground freight dock in the basement of its St. Louis headquarters building.[4] The spools were used by the Post-Dispatch in the production of its daily circulation newspaper. The Post-Dispatch from the 1960s to the 1980s operated in a profit sharing arrangement with their competitor the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and eventually took on the printing of the latter's paper at their location. The Globe-Democrat had occupied the former Midwest Terminal Building (still extant and now known as the Globe Building) headquarters of ITR starting in the 1950s.
RSM's locomotive was an EMD SW-8, formerly owned by the United States Army.
The Illinois Terminal Railroad today
The McKinley Bridge across the
The Illinois Traction System's generating plants also sold electricity to customers in many towns and cities serviced by the electric railroad. In the 1930s, the railroad and its electrical utility separated from each other. The formerly-affiliated electrical utility was spun off to form the Illinois Power and Light Company. Illinois Power provided electrical service to much of central and southern Illinois before its acquisition by Ameren. Consolidation into the parent firm occurred in 2004.
The Illinois Traction Building in Champaign, Illinois, also known as the Illinois Traction Station and the Illinois Power Building, was built in 1913 and was designed by Joseph Royer. It served as the headquarters of the Illinois Traction System, as well as the Champaign passenger depot. It then became the headquarters of the Illinois Terminal Railway, and, until 1985, Illinois Power and Light. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.[10]
Norfolk Southern painted NS #1072, an
Gallery
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An Illinois Traction conductor, c. 1912 -
Illinois Terminal 1605, a GP7 preserved in operating condition at Illinois Railway Museum -
EMD SD70ACe painted in Illinois Terminal colors, leads an intermodal train through Lewistown, Pennsylvania
References
Notes
- ^ Fehl, George. "The Illinois Traction System: Comprehensive Traction Maps and Railway Illustrations, Parts One-Four." (G/S Productions, 1992).
- ISSN 1541-809X.
- ISBN 1932804005.
- ^ a b Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "Railroad Switching Service of Missouri Freight Train on Illinois Terminal St. Louis Line". YouTube.
- ^ Hilton, Zack (28 May 2006). "Photo Details". LocoPhotos.com. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
- ^ "Federal Register". Government Information Library. Vol. 70. 1 February 2005.
- ^ O'Neil, Tim. "Limited traffic flows along new Tucker Boulevard, completion set for August". Stltoday.com.
- ^ "The Trestle | Great Rivers Greenway". Archived from the original on 2013-12-17. Retrieved 2013-12-16.
- ^ "Saint Louis, Missouri". Abandoned Rails. Retrieved 2023-07-01.
- ^ "National Register Information System – (#86003782)". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
- ^ "Norfolk Southern Heritage Locomotives". WVNC Rails. 7 July 2012. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
Bibliography
- Hilton, George; Due, John (1964). The Interurban Electric Railroad in America (Reissued ed.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804740143.
- A very thorough publication about the interurban transportation industry in general. Covers initial financing, construction, physical structures, cars and equipment, freight business, power generation, impact of the Depression, and decline.
- Middleton, Wm. D. (1961). The Interurban Era (PDF). Milwaukee, WI: Kalmbach Publishing Co. LCCN 61-10728.
- A historical review of U.S. interurban railways state by state. Extensive photographs and commentary.
- Young, Andrew (1984). St. Louis Car Company Album {Interurbans Special #91}. Glendale, CA: Interurban Press. ISBN 0916374629.
- St. Louis Car constructed the streamliners in late 1940s that failed to revive Illinois Terminal Railroad's passenger business.
External links
Railways portal
- Illinois Terminal Railroad heritage society
- Sample Illinois Terminal PCC
- Illinois Terminal System Maps
- Illinois Traction System Photo Gallery, Historical Society of Montgomery County Illinois
- Illinois Terminal Railroad Collection - McLean County Museum of History archives
- Illinois Traction Terminal Collection, McLean County Museum of History
- Champaign-Urbana-Danville Interurban, 1903 Archived 2020-07-16 at the Wayback Machine
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