The Illinois Terminal--the great anachronism

Trains Magazine General Discussion
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Learning about the Illinois Central (Gulf) is probably my favorite railroading past time, but the more I dig into things, the Illinois Terminal has to be more interesting. The fact that this street running inter-urban line made it to 1980 (albeit as a freight carrier) is pretty amazing to me.

Anyway, I have a few questions about the line. Apparently, the line was successful enough to survive for decades after the inter-urban busines dropped in the 1950s but not successful enough to upgrade its physical plant, and it gradually began to replace lines with trackeage rights.

Does anyone have a breakdown of when various lines were abandoned and what line the IT used as a substitute?

When did the IT stop serving Bloomington? Did the IT ever run freight to Danville? When did it stop running to Danville?

How did the IT serve the Monterry Line in the 1970s? Did it still use its line to Springfield, or did it get there via trackaege rights from the CNW?

Did the IT ever seriously consider attempting to upgrade its physical plant with heavier rail, or did they just realize it was impossible with all of that street running and that its days were numbered?

I saw an IT grain hopper on the CSX main in downtown Indy today–I sure would have liked to have seen a train of 120 of those things go through small Illinois towns via street running.

Thanks,

Gabe

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Source: Moody’s Transportation Manual, 1971

Incorporated in Delaware Nov 8, 1954 as Illinois Terminal Railroad Company by the following companies: B&O, CEI, CBQ, GMO, Litchfield and Madison, IC, NKP, Frisco, and Wbash with Rock Island later joining in.

Mainline passenger service discontinued 3/4/1956 with St. Louis - Granite City ending 6/22/1958.

In 1971 IT owned 140 miles of track, leased 3, and trackage rights on 251. “A substantial part of such mainline is laid on land owned in fee. The balance is laid in part on land as to which easments for the purpose have been granted and in part on public streets and highways.”

Gabe - what is “in fee”?

Further…

Retirement of unproductive trackage occured as follows:

Forsyth to Mackinaw - 60 miles

Alton to Grafton - 15 miles

Granite City to Wood River - 13 miles

Lang, Il to Edwardville - 15 miles

All of this was in 1953.

Further yet…

Trackage rights were granted as follows - year, railroad, segment, miles:

12/1/1959 - Wabash, Springfield to Decatur, 39 miles

4/30/1961 - P&E, Urbana to DeLong, 14 miles

10/16/1961 - IC, Decatur - Champaign, 41 miles

4/1/1962- IC, Springfield to Lincoln, 33 miles

8/1/1966 - PRR & NW, Morton to East Peoria, 6 miles

8/20/1969 - IC, Springfield to Edwardsville, 81 miles

8/20, 1970 - CNW, Edwardsville - Benid, 23 miles

Obviously, with ownership by the railroads, it made sense to abandon the IT trackage once the passenger service ended and use trackage rights. There are probably segments of IT left in service. I believe the line running to ADM is former IT. NS operates it now.

Gabe, you should pickup a Moodys sometime. Great reference. In fact, if you ever get up here again to go to a Sandhouse meeting, I will give you a 1972 Moodys.

Hope all is well.

Ed

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Info gleaned from 1955 Moodys:

IT owned 345 miles in 1954, leased 3 and had trackage rights on 6 miles.

New electric passenger train sets were purchased in 1949 and placed into service StL - Granite City. In 1950 IT purchased 9 - 1000 hp diesel locomotives which allowed them to eliminated all coal burning steam locomotives. In 1953 IT purchased 25 new gondolas, 2 GP7s and 10 new all steel cabooses. In 1952-3 IT took delivery of 100 flat bottom gons and 150 open top hoppers.

Freight tonnage was dropping quickly. In 1948 they handled 8.0 m tons by 1954 it was down to 5.7 m tons. Nearly all of that drop could be attributed to declines in "products of mines (1.5m tons) and manufactured goods (.7 m tons).

Operating ratio went from 68.9% to 86.2% in those 7 years with net income falling from $1.4 million ($13.3m revenue) to $.2m on $10.9 revenue.

The times they were achanging.

Ed

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Thanks Ed–

“in fee” probably is short hand for the legal term “fee simple.”

Fee simple is a property right term, which means absolute ownership–for instance, the way most of us own our house. There are lesser property rights that mean your property can be divested or you are limited in the way you can use it (even aside from zoning restrictions).

I didn’t realize the IT was such a zombie line by 1970.

Gabe

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IT’s main asset was its industrial and terminal trackage in the Metro East area, which may be one of the reasons that a multitude of Class 1’s purchased it jointly in 1954.

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There are two good books on the IT. One is by Dale A. Jenkins and is titled The Illinois Terminal Railroad, the Route of Personalized Service. Published 2005 and probably could be found on Amazon. There is a second book but I can’t remember the author.

IT also has a historical society which you can find on Google.

Too much for me to try to answer on this thread. There is an awful lot of history and a lot of buildings left if you know where to look for them. Good luck.

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Is this the other title? I found it on amazon.com.

Illinois Terminal, the Electric Years [Hardcover]Paul H. Stringham (Author)

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Illinois Terminal existed long before 1954. It looks to me that the Moody’s listing you have is for the company jointly owned by a number of railroads that acquired IT in 1956. But there was an earlier “Illinois Terminal”. It’s principal ancestor was the Illinois Traction Company (which,as its name suggsts, was an electric interurban". In the 1920’s, Illinois Traction was was exapanding heavily into interchange freight business and acquired a number of terminal freight railroads in the East St. Louis area, one of which was named “Illinois Terminal”. In 1928, the “Illinois Terminal” name was applied to the entire system, but it was still mostly the old Illinois Traction system.

The consortium of railroads which acquired IT in 1956 consisted of 11 roads: B&O, C&EI, CB&Q, C&NW, CRI&P, GM&O, IC, NKP, NYC, Frisco and Wabash (note that this list doesn’t exactly match the Moody’s list, which apparently listed the original RR’s in the group, not its final composition). I don’t know how the sale ws structured, but it was probably an asset sale, with the “new”, railroad owned IT acquiring the road’s assets from the “old” IT. Following the 1956 transaction, IT continued to operate as a separate company (in my experience, a railroad supposedly controlled by 11 other railroad is, in reality, controlled by none of them). As you note, most of IT’s own mainlines were replaced over time with trackage rights over its owners’ lines. In 1981, IT finally died. It’s trackage rights were mostly discontinued, and its remaining trackage went mostly to N&W (now NS).

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James D. Johnson, “Lincoln Land Traction” (1965) is another IT book. Also, Hilton and Due’s “The Electric Interurban Railways in America”, Stanford 1964 (the seminal work on the interurban industry) has extensive information on IT.

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Yes, that’s it. I believe Morning Sun has a couple books out also. IT had a lot of different color schemes. That was what made it so interesting

I saw a double ended PCC car at the Warehouse Point museum north of Hartford, Conn. It was in the green and cream and was well kept. Shined like a new penny. These ran between St. Louis and Granite City.

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To expound on what Ed previously posted from Moody’s-

Granite City to Wood River - 13 miles- The concrete abutments of the old Wood River branch can still be seen at Lenox Tower in Mitchell

Lang, Il to Edwardville - 15 miles-This is the original interurban line that ran between Edwardsville (Leclaire) and Lang (McKinley Yard in Madison)-a good chunk of this line east out of Leclaire was made into a bike trail (part of the extensive Madison County Trail system now)- which is where I spent a lot of time riding my bike as a kid in Edwardsville. Somewhere along the way as well prior to 1950 were the abandonments of the Edwardsville “Town Line” which diverged on the west side of Leclaire at the Bells susbstation, and the Madison town branch which diverged at Lang and ran along side ILL 203 into town.

4/30/1961 - P&E, Urbana to DeLong, 14 miles- Prior to trackage rights on the NYC’s P&E the ITC did run electric freight east to Danville and Champaign. The service was cut back to Champaign/Urbana where ITC served multiple industries there.

8/20/1969 - IC, Springfield to Edwardsville, 81 miles- More specifically the trackage rights were granted from Mont (which is on the east side of Glen Carbon) to Iles Tower on the south side of Springfield. After 1972 the ITC was the only thing running besides IC locals between Mont and Iles (ICG having switched their through trains over to the ex-GMO).

8/20, 1970 - CNW, Edwardsville - Benid, 23 miles - This should read Edwardsville (Leclaire Tower) to Moneterey Junction (Gillespie)

Prior to this when the mine opened in 1968- the ITC did use their own old interurban trackage to haul coal from the mine, which resulted in restrictions on loading and car lengths due to light rail, heavy grades and street running in Gillespie and Staunton. The ITC crossed the CNW at grade on the south side of BENLD (sorry for the caps but I wanted to clarify the spelling of the town name). Gillespie and Benld are very close, and M

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Bravo, Nordique and Ed and anyone else I may have missed. I knew a number of IT fans, including the late Bill Clouser. We used to meet for dinners monthly and all of us could talk for hours. I did some railfanning and saw a lot, but I was never much of a camera man. (I had to do a lot of photographing on my job, so that made it seem like work.)

I remember in Hamel, IL there was a substation, and the crossing was still visible in the street, including flashing lights and a powerhouse. Apparently it was too expensive to take the rails out of the street, because they pointed directly at I-55 and the grading was still visible but no rails, This was about 1975 or so.

As for Benld, we here on the Missouri side pronounced it as though there was a vowel between the n and the l, but the folks on the east side pronounced it differently.

Long live the IT, my favorite interurban.

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Ishmael, What you recall in Hamel would have been the old depot- it had electrical connections on the outer side of the building like the substations. The main substation was south of Hamel at a point called Cornstalk-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nordique72/2998576782/

The substation has now been razed. In Hamel itself on old Route 66 (ILL 157) the ITC crossing remained paved over until the 1990s as I recall it clearly in the cement too- yet it even though it angled toward I-55 coming in from the south heading in a northeasterly direction, in town the highway jutted right through a little “slalom” just south of the ILL 140 intersection, crossed the ITC still running northeasterly (the depot was on the northwest side of the old crossing- I believe it has now been torn down) through town before turning to the northwest- the pole line north of town towards Worden was a dead giveaway as to where the tracks ran post-abandonment. The last time I looked this past summer the pole line was still there. In the 90s even, there were still many ex-ITC relics left behind in the weeds along the original interurban routes from old substations, to remains of crossing signals and pole lines.

As for Benld- we always pronounced in Ben-elll-d with a hard “D” on the end. The town is named for Benjamin L. Dorsey who founded the town in 1895.

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Wow, you guys are a wealth of information.

Anyone know when the IT stopped serving Bloomington? I grew up in Mt. Olive–ten miles from Stauton–what I would give to see an IT 60-car coal drag on Stauton Main Street. That would have to be something.

Thanks,

Gabe

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I’m not sure, Gabe, but I have a 1952 map here which shows the line from Mackinaw Junction to Bloomington to Decatur has been abandoned. I also have a photo of a long train coming down the middle of the street in Morton. By that time, people were complining about this type of traffic. The trains pulled by the electric motors were usually much shorter.

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February, 1953.

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Did they excercise trackage rights to get to the city after 1963?

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I’m currently reading “The Illinois Terminal RR : The Road of Personalized Services” by Dale Jenkins. I found this at a good price on eBay. In my opinion this is THE book on the IT, so far it has been a very fascinating read.

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Spoony81- Welcome to Trains.com! [C):-)]

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Thank You… I didn’t realize it was my first post, I just assumed I had posted before