The winners for our September 2024 photo contest were Ricky Bivins 1st Place and Chris Dees for 2nd! Congratulations Bill and our next contest runs the month of January 2025! Entries due to Jim Pearson by midnight on Febuary 7th, 2025.
Our 2025 Chapter Calendars will be available for Purchase/Order at our November meeting and available for pickup at our December Christmas Party.
1st Place West Kentucky Chapter of the NRHS July 2024 Photo Contest – A northbound mixed freight with CN power leading the way crosses over West Broadway Street in Madisonville, Ky on the CSX Henderson Subdivision, on September 12th, 2023. – Photo by Ricky Bivins
2nd Place West Kentucky Chapter of the NRHS July 2024 Photo Contest – Held Up At Horicon – Wisconsin & Southern SD40-2 4219, GP59 5906 and another GP59 await tomorrow morning’s early call for train HJ-1 (Horicon to Janesville) at the company’s Horicon, Wisconsin engine facility. 4219 began life as a standard SD40 prior to her rebuild. – Photographed September 03, 2024 by Chris Dees
West Kentucky Chapter of the NRHS July 2024 Photo Contest – A southbound mixed freight heads through downtown Mortons Gap, Ky on the CSX Henderson Subdivision, on September 3rd, 2023. – Photo by Ricky Bivins
West Kentucky Chapter of the NRHS July 2024 Photo Contest – A Streetcar Named Desire – On September 06, 2024, Kenosha, Wisconsin Transit Authority (KTA) streetcar 4616 awaits the first run of the day. The KTA runs a two-mile loop through downtown Kenosha, stopping on demand for citizens running errands or tourists enjoying the sights and sounds along the Lake Michigan shoreline. The 4616’s yellow colors pay homage to The Cincinnati Street Railway system. – Photo by Chris Dees
The Illinois Central Railroad’s original line between Cairo and Freeport Illinois, via Centralia was completed in September 1856. As the railroad grew and traffic developed, the original “Old Main” or “Gruber Line” segment north of Centralia via Decatur and Bloomington-Normal (referred to officially in ICG timetables as the Amboy District) lost its original significance as the primary mainline between New Orleans and Chicago grew rapidly.
The fate of the original IC main was in question as the flurry of spinoffs, sales and abandonments by the Illinois Central Gulf in the early 1980s came to pass. Long gone were the good old days recalled by Jim Boyd in his book “Monday Morning Rails”. Relegated and downgraded to secondary main status, the additional (and substantial) existing state tax burden from the original land grant legislation for the route slowly choked the Gruber to death.
Eventually, Illinois Central Gulf was granted a certificate of abandonment by the Interstate Commerce Commission with date of formal discontinuance of service to be effective May 10, 1985. However, the Gruber would not give up the ghost just yet. Just like the Windy City’s White Sox and Cubs, it would take more than three strikes to call this deal out.
The first suitor was the Prairie Central Railway, which at the time was operating the former Wabash Valley Railroad (Conrail route) from Decatur southeast to Paris, with an extension to Mount Carmel. Always a precarious operation, numerous derailments and disagreement with Illinois Central Gulf regarding trackage rights into Decatur soured any chance for PACY to purchase the line. The Interstate Commerce Commission found PACY to not be financially responsible in its bid for the Freeport line, and the resulting 1985 PACY bankruptcy did not help matters.
Second up was the Freeport & El Paso Railroad, formed to purchase the 121.18 mile route between Freeport, Illinois (MP934.18) and El Paso, Illinois (MP 813.). In the July 1, 1983 ruling by the Interstate Commerce Commission, F&EP’s offer was found to be bona fide and the new company to be financially responsible. ICG and F&EP entered into a contract and the planned sale was approved September 21, 1983. However, the deal quickly unraveled and on May 10, 1984, the Interstate Commerce Commission vacated its earlier ruling, voiding the sale because F&EP had failed to obtain proper title insurance and the $150,000 earnest payment bounced like a rubber ball. Then came a railroad with reporting marks of a classic 1980s muscle car, the IROC, or Illinois & Rock River Railroad Company. Incorporated on July 13, 1984 by two former Rock Island railroad executives, a short line consultant, and a railroad construction contractor, the IROC filed ICC Docket No. 30638 on March 11, 1985 just two months before the targeted abandonment by ICG. Business plans of the IROC were supported by several on-line grain elevators, Motor Wheel in Mendota, and Lonestar Cement in Oglesby. Additional plans were in the works to construct a rail-barge transloading facility on the Illinois River at La Salle, near the massive Illinois River bridge (which still stands and has rail service today). Purchase price was set at $3.027 million.
But like the first two offers, IROC’s plans were soon scuttled – this time by unhappy unions and their lawyers. On March 29, 1985, the Railway Labor Executives Association filed a letter of opposition with the ICC regarding the sale. Not to be left out, the United Transportation Union filed a follow-up formal protest on April 19, 1985. With time running out on the abandonment authority’s expiration date of May 10, 1985, the ensuing litigation tied up IROC efforts in courts instead of out on the rails building the business plan. Opportunity loss from the 1985 grain harvest eventually resulted in IROC calling it quits without ever turning a steel wheel on steel rail. And although new regional Chicago Central & Pacific attempted negotiations to purchase the line from Freeport south to Oglesby (location of the Lonestar Cement facility), Illinois Central Gulf could not settle on a purchase price and the Gruber was gone.
Luckily today there are some short segments of the Gruber between Centralia and Freeport still in operation.
Buzzi Unichem still operates over the large Illinois River bridge between LaSalle and Oglesby to serve the cement facility in Oglesby and interchange with Iowa Interstate.
A short segment of trackage is utilized daily by ICG successor in the Decatur terminal area. South of Decatur, the Decatur Junction operates between Elwin and Assumption and it the location of a nicely restored depot.
Vandalia Railroad serves a few industrial customers on a short spur at Illinois’s first capital city and the railroad’s namesake city of Vandalia.
And just north of Centralia, an asphalt plant is served on a few hundred feet of the southernmost section of the old Gruber.
But perhaps the favorite portion to railfans is the segment between Heyworth and Clinton operated by the Illinois Terminal Belt Railroad serving several grain elevators with Paducah rebuilt GP10s just like us old guys remember. Yes, some forty years since its abandonment, new railfans can still get a glimpse of what the Gruber used to look like – four stack exhaust belching out along the prairie as seen in the accompanying photo at Wapella, IL on August 25, 2023.
The Union Pacific’s eastbound City of Portland is about 30-miles upriver from The Dalles. In another couple hours those three units will use all their power to propel the train up and over the Blue Mountains. Passengers will detrain in Chicago the second morning.
One would expect these train picture stories to be about the railroad or trains. But what are those white structures at the tip of the pointers..? The US Coast Guard calls them “Range Dayboards.” These Aids, which are usually shore-mounted come in pairs to help the vessel operator maintain a straight and safe course within a navigable channel. Each member of the pair is separated from the next in distance and elevation, with the one in front shorter than the rear one. When the two appear to be vertically stacked, the vessel is on the range line, and the center of the channel. If you look closely there is a red vertical line on both Dayboards. A perfectly straight single red-line has the vessel dead-center, mid channel.
In this scene, the Dayboards guide marine traffic going downstream. A skipper would view these markers from his position far out of the picture to the right (upstream). A green buoy will guide him (her) in making a safe turn to starboard (right) and on down-river. Not visible, but most likely there is another pair of dayboards downstream on the far shore. In darkness red lights provide the same message. Dayboards are found not only in rivers, rather they mark the safe course when entering many harbors, particularly entrances to rivers and bays when entering or exiting the ocean.
Burlington Junction Railway Alco C415 center cab number 702 sits at Quincy, Illinois on the afternoon of October 15, 2024. The rare bird began her career on the Southern Pacific. – Photo by Chris Dees.
Rust in Peace – Former Chicago and Northwestern GP40 5515 is seen at Burlington, Iowa on October 15, 2024, on a yard track of the Burlington Junction Railway. – Photo by Chris Dees.
Rain into an old friend in San Jose, IL this afternoon. She now works for Encompass Grain and Rail at their grain elevator. Fromer IC 2035 – Photo by Chris Dees
