The Sycamore IL city council last night voted to purchase the old CNW freight depot just south of downtown.
Nice to see a historic rail building being saved.
Very nice that it will be saved. Here is a somewhat better picture:
Just to be clear… This depot was always CNW serving the line that ran north from DeKalb, right? The Chicago Great Western, which also ran through Sycamore, IL, had it’s own depot elsewhere in town. Please clarify.
Thanks,
CC
The depot being preserved was always C&NW. The line it served was pulled up long before D-day (takeover by UP) in April 1995. There was also a Chicago Great Western depot on the north side of Sycamore, but it was one of those cheap and ugly replacement jobs put up in the 50’s:
http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/210318/sn/37371383/name/n_a:550:0
Techincally this is the original Sycamore & Cortland RR depot. Back in the early 1860s or so the townsfolk of Sycamore (the county seat of DeKalb County), didn’t want the rival town of DeKalb to be bigger than them. DeKalb already had the C&NW mainline running east-west through town, and Sycamore had no railroad service at the time. So they built a railroad running sort of south-southeasterly down to the little town of Cortland to connect with the C&NW and avoid connecting in DeKalb. This lasted for quite a while, until the C&NW bought the little S&C.
The C&NW north-south line through Sycamore was built around 1880 or so and was mainly a connection down to get coal from the mines down around LaSalle, IL. They did go through town near this station though.
The Chicago Great Western ran east-west through town just north of downtown (HWY 64). Their are two ex-CGW depots still standing in town. The last metal shed building stands just east of the HWY 23 crossing, about two blocks south of HWY 64. It is some sort of an office/storage building for a local trucking firm. The original wood CGW depot was moved about a half mile to the north back in the 1940s and has been a house since then. It sits on the west side of HWY 23, just north of the side street where the school is–it has been added onto and such, but it has the familiar look of a depot.
The Chicago & North Western Historical Society did a multi-part story on the history of Dekalb/Sycamore railroads back about 20 years ago. You might be able to still get the issues through them or keep an eye on eBay. I would imagine that the local historical societies or libraries in either DeKalb or Sycamore would have copies too.
Lance W.