Here in central Illinois trails are being built in the Springfield area. In addition to the trails on the former B&O southeast of Springfield through Rochester, and the former Illinois Terminal tracks, a new trail is being constructed west of Springfield and it looks like some of it is built on former C&NW tracks, judging by the pic of the overpass.
http://www.sj-r.com/carousel/x1377000876/West-side-bike-trail-work-could-start-this-spring
Construction could begin this spring on the first six miles of a bike trail across western Sangamon County.
Local transportation planners said Thursday bids would be opened in March for the first phase of the Sangamon Valley Trail, subject to final approval by the county board. The goal is to open the trail in the summer of 2011.
The first section is to run between Centennial Park, north of Interstate 72 on Springfield’s west side, and Stuart Park, which is southwest of Capital Airport. Eventually, planners want to build a 38-mile path cutting through the west side of the county.
County planning engineer Brian Davis said Thursday the trail would be similar in design to the Interurban and Wabash trails in Springfield and Chatham.
While this phase of the trail will not link to existing bike paths, county planners do expect it will be heavily used.
“It’s probably going to be more popular than the Interurban because of all the subdivisions in that area,” said Davis.
Lots of old rails are becoming new trails nowadays. I wish there was a demand for them to be put back into service. Seems like if they would it would relive some capacity issues, but I’m not going to act like I know everything. We’ll just let management decide that.
Justin
The C&NW track south of Athens, IL was abandoned in the late 1990s when UP figured that the track was redundant since the parallel former GM&O track south of Springfield was lightly used by freight anyways. When the new Global IV intermodal facility opens up in a few years freight along the Chicago/St Louis tracks is expected to increase. I guess if they wanted too UP could have kept the C&NW tracks to bypass Springfield, and use the I&M track as a connection to the former GM&O route, which UP already uses for the C&NW track north of Athens.
Lyon,
That entire 38 mile stretch is the former CNW main line from Barr (Athens) to Girard. The line was abandoned in 2000 after the UP secured trackage rights on the I&M from Barr to Ridgely a little earlier than that (circa 1999). The freights that used the ex-CNW main were transferred to the ex-GMO at Springfield for their final miles into St. Louis. I was always led to believe that the line south of Barr was abandoned in part since there were few industries on it, and beyond Monterrey Mine at Gillespie, there wasn’t much to the south either. Another factor seemed to be Edwardsville- where there was a glut of road crossings and two tight 30-MPH restricted curves, not to mention a pretty steep hill down into the Mississippi River flood plain that started on the south end of Leclaire siding and ran all the way down to Glen Carbon. On the north end of the abandonment- the Sangamon River valley hills were pretty rough too, though the line did have a feather in it’s cap by cutting across the far west side of Springfield. Once the UP got the old GMO from the SP it became apparent that the UP would abandon the parts of the old CNW/L&M route it didn’t need anymore- so in the summer of 2000 the rails came up.