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The Pennsylvania RR let TP&W handle most east-west traffic for them between East Peoria and Effner. The Penn Central merger in 1968 led to the diversion of the small amount of through traffic still handled by the PRR Terre Haute - Farmdale Jct. line to the Peoria & Eastern. A portion of the line between Atlanta and Waynesville was embargoed after a 1973 washout. The Maroa - Farmdale Jct. portion was then sold to Illinois Terminal on April 1, 1976. IT was a north-south oriented Regional.
Conrail closed the Olin (IN) to Crawfordsville (IN) segment of the former Peoria & Eastern (operated by New York Central and predecessor Big Four since 1890) Indianapolis - Pekin mainline in 1981 after it was discovered the Wabash River was undercutting the railroad bridge spanning it. The daily pair of manifests - INPE and PEIN - were diverted via Terre Haute. Flooding caused washouts near Mackinaw in the fall of 1983, which led to a permanent diversion of INPE and PEIN to the Norfolk & Western west of Bloomington sometime in 1984. Conrail put the “Pekin Secondary” up for sale in 1991, but took it off the block after talks with Pioneer Railcorp fell through in 1992. The lines were for sale again in 1995 and after sale to Norfolk Southern of the Bloomington - Urbana segment the following year, Conrail replaced direct service to Peoria with a haulage deal (NS handled there traffic between Lafayette and East Peoria) lasting to the breakup in 1999.
Norfolk & Western decided to close the Lafayette - Gibson City section of its old NKP line to through traffic in late 1986, rerouting everything via Decatur (not Chicago) instead. classification of Peoria and Bloomington-Normal traffic at Decatur made sense because both north-south traffic inherited from ITC in 1982 and east-west former NKP traffic could be handled there.
The TP&W served as a major east-west bridge route from 1927 to 1981. It’s eastern connect