Streator, IL: Railroad Hub

Update: I just finished fixing some serious formatting issues. I wrote this before I learned that what the public sees is not what I see while writing the blog. I also discovered that the State of Illinois saw fit to break all of my aerial map references. The prefix needs to be changed from "isgs.illinois.edu/nsdihome/" to "clearinghouse.isgs.illinois.edu/". That mind numbing clerical work is going to have to wait for another day. If you do get a 404, you know what to change in the meantime.

While researching the Illinois Valley and Northern Railroad (IV&N), I discovered quite a few railroads went through or to Streator, IL. Rather than trace each abandoned route individually, I decided to analyze all of the railroads in Streator so that I have to download and analyze the aerial maps only once. The railroads were built between 1867 and 1882.

My 1928 and 1973 Railroad Atlases show 8 lines going to Streator. The direction is where the route is from and the next town on the route is included in parentheses. The colors are for the map below. The "***" use below stands for the following corporate linage: BNSF(1996)/BN(1970)/Santa Fe(1888)/Chicago & St. Louis Railway (1885)/Chicago, St. Louis & Western Railroad (CSL&W, 1881)/Chicago, Pekin & Southwestern (CP&S) (Wikipedia).

• Blue: East (Dwight) and West (Lostant): NS/NYC/Chicago, Indiana & Southern/Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, 1881 (StockLobster), 1882 (BiogInBlack).
• Green: East (Dwight): Aband/ICG/GM&O/Chicago & Alton (C&A) (Dwight Division), 1870 (GenealogyTrails).
• Green: West (Wenona) is Aband/ICG/GM&O/C&A/"Stub End Road," 1868 (BiogInBlack). In 1870 this segment would become part of the Dwight Division of Alton (GenealogyTrails)
• Purple: Northeast (Mazon): ***/Chicago and Illinois River Railroad, 1876.  It was the CSL&W that extended the track from Mazon to Corwith in 1881. Before 1881 it used trackage rights on the Chicago & Illinois River Railroad (C&IR). The C&IR became part of Alton. (GenealogyTrails, Wikipedia)
• Orange: North (Oglesby): Aband(1980)/BN/CB&Q/Ottawa, Oswego, and Fox River Valley (OO&FRV), 1867 (GenealogyTrails). 1867 is wrong. That is when the corporation completed the segment to Wenona (see below). Coal had been discovered in Streator, and they ignored their charter in order to get a quick connection to ship coal and bring in mining machinery. 1871 is when they completed work on the chartered route (BiogInBlack).
• Yellow: Northwest (Oswego): Illinois Railway/Illinois RailNet/BNSF/BN/CB&Q/Illinois Valley and Northern Railroad (IV&N), 1870 (BiogInBlack).
• Purple: Southwest (Ancona): ***, 1873 (GenealogyTrails, Wikipedia). This route included trackage rights on the Toledo, Peoria and Warsaw Railway (later, Toledo, Peoria and Western) between Eureka and Washington. Santa Fe's mainline to Kansas City joined the CP&S at Ancona making the Ancona-Pekin segment the only Santa Fe branch line in Illinois.  This branch is now abandoned except for a segment servicing Morton, IL from NS/N&W/NKP. (Wikipedia)
• Light green: Southeast (Pontiac): Aband/N&W/Wabash/Chicago & Paducah/Fairbury, Pontiac and Northwestern, soon after CP&S was completed to the southwest (GenealogyTrails). 

Satellite plus Paint

Red is used for an abandoned track. Black is used for a connector for which I don't know the owner. It would be either BNSF/Santa Fe or NS/NYC. This connection allows about 8-10 trains a day to bypass Chicago. Light blue is an industrial spur. OO&FRV abandoned 0.4 miles in Streator ( BNSF Track Segments, Segment 60). Thus the south end of OO&FRC is "dashed." Looking at a satellite map, the tracks seem to stop 40 feet south of E. Grant St. But that does not make much sense. Why would they maintain crossing signals that protects only 40 feet of track?

Junctions:

• SantaFe vs. Wabash
• CB&Q vs NYC+Alton

Railroads were needed to serve the coal mines in the town.

Streator was known for its coal. It had 25,000 acres of un-mined coal that was pronounced by the C.B. & Q. fuel inspector as the best engine coal in Northern Illinois. It had a mining capacity of ¾ of a million tons of coal annually. (Museum)

Other industries developed that also needed the support of railroads. They helped sustain the town after the coal ran out in the 1920s. Because of shale and clay deposits, plants that made bricks, tiles, etc. started in the mid-1870s. Because of the 99.44% pure silica St. Peter Sandstone and limestone in the region and coal to heat those ingredients, a glass industry started in the early 1880s. One plant, sponsored by Anheuser-Busch breweries made bottles and other plants made flat glass. (BiogInBlack) By the early 20th century, Streator held the title of "Glass Manufacturing Capital of the World"

In 1912 Streator reached the markets through seven lines of railroad radiating in twelve different directions, covering 45,000 miles and reaching thirty-one states and territories. It had thirty passenger and forty freight trains daily and handled eight million pounds of freight. (Museum)

Road Map

In 1928, Streator had 9 "spokes." Five of these still exist --- Illinois Railway and two each for SanteFe and NYC. Note above that there were 12 spokes in 1912, so 3 were gone already by 1928.

I used a 1939 aerial map that I downloaded from the ILHAP site. The first issue I addressed is that it looks like there used to be a connection across the north part of town between Sante Fe east and NYC west, but it is now severed. Looking at a satellite image, the connection is not only severed, the road map is wrong because all of Sante Fe's east/west track across the north has been removed.



To confirm that the connection between the Sante Fe and NYC east existed back in 1939, I got an aerial map to the southeast of Streator. Not only did it exist, what is now Katchewan Park was a rail served industry back then.

ILHAP: Aerial Map

While I was looking at the aerial map, I found Santa Fe's roundhouse. I also spotted a depot on the west side of their yards. Looking at a satellite image, it not only still stands, it looks well maintained. As I would expect, the freight house that was north of the depot is gone. But I can't reconcile the crossing and tall building in the background of the following photo with the aerial photo. This looks like an issue for a field trip. 

Photo from  Depots

There is another set of tracks leaving Streator along the NYC east route because it keeps going southwestish after the NYC turns east. You can easily follow the tree lines and land scars on the satellite map to Cornell, which has a big isolated grain elevator, to Rowe and through Pontiac. This would have been the Wabash. Following this RoW back into Streator on the west side of the NYC RoW, there are trees to follow until you get south of Lundy. Switching to Streator's aerial map makes it obvious why I could not trace it any further on the satellite image --- buildings have been built over the RoW.

Satellite plus Paint

Before discussing the Wabash RoW some more, I'm pursuing an industrial branch that used to go towards the river.  The red lines to the right indicate most of the trackage of the spur. The industrial area was an industry that evidently had tank farms. And between that industry and Shale Road was a strip coal mine!

ILHAP: Aerial Map

ILHAP: Aerial Map

Rather than describe were the RoW went, it is time for another aerial map excerpt. Note that the nw/se diagonal tree line on the right of the above satellite image was the Wabash RoW. What is now a park was vacant land in 1939. I wonder what used to be there. The Wabash connected with the Sante Fe at the top of this triangle. It then continued a few blocks north and terminated in a small yard and connected to the NYC, which connected to the two CB&Q routes.

The NYC RoW goes up along the right side of the aerial map excerpt to the right until it turns northwest when it meets the Alton RoW. To investigate the Alton route, I include another excerpt that has the NYC and Alton crossing of the Santa Fe in the lower-right corner.

ILHAP: Aerial Map

The Alton entered a small yard before it curved west as it crossed the NYC and went westish across the Vermillion River. It then turned southwestish in what is now the River View Cemetery. Then it is easy to follow the RoW on the satellite map until it gets to Wenona. I think the IC route through Wenona was the originally chartered and constructed route. It looks like that IC segment is now also abandoned.

Photo from Depots

Based on the aerial photo, I originally thought the Alton depot was near Broadway and Vermillion. But now I suspect it was on the east side of Bodznick Park.

The Alton RoW to the east leaves town as a straight line to the southeast. It crosses the NYC line that has already turned east, then a couple of tributaries to a creek, then heads due east through Blackstone, and enters Dwight on the south side where it connects with the UP/SP/ICG/GM&O/Chicago & Alton mainline.

Satellite plus Paint

Just north of where the Alton crossed the NYC, the IV&N connected to the NYC. I could not find an entry on Bridge Hunters for the ghost bridge over the Vermillion River.

Need to add: branch of Chicago, Ottawa and Peoria Railways interurban from Ottawa to Streator was built in 1908. In 1923, the CO&P became the Illinois Valley Division of the Illinois Traction System. It was abandoned in 1929. (Wikipedia)

Jerry Jackson -> Chicagoland Railfan

Update: Jerry's comment:

Leaving Streator headed west. GP35 2835 leads a typical lash-up back in 88'. Those were the days.

I may be able to recreate the tree colors, but there is no way I could recreate the engine colors. Two of the six engines are in the "Shouldn't Paint So Fast" livery because SP and SF where expecting to merge as SPSF. Also known as the Kodachrome livery.

Richard Fiedler comment

Richard's comment: "Alton gas electric in Streator crossing the Santa Fe" It was posted because it was an example of a gas electric unit. But I include it as insight of the track layout in the town.

Dale Burkhalter posted
At Streator, Illinois NYC Kankakee Line. Around 1962.
Looking Northwest.

Other comments by Dale:

 The building on the left is the NYC depot. The signal is for the AT&SF Chicago mainline.

At one time, Streator had five railroads coming through town. The NYC, AT&SF, GM&O, N&W, & CB&Q. All were branch lines except the AT&SF. Also, at one time, Streator was known as the glass bottle capitol of the world.

After I posted a link to this article:

Hired onto the NYC in 1967. At that time there were 5 railroads going into Streator.

Dennis - The black connector line connects the NYC track to the AT&SF track at NYC's Streator Jct. I believe the Eastern section was NYC and the Western section was AT&SF. We interchanged trains their instead of taking them downtown to AT&SF's Streator yard. So, I assume it was jointly owned. 

(Facebooked)

Bricks and glass is why so many railroads built to this town.

Roger Kujawa posted
Streator, Illinois Clay & Coal Pit Mining Barr Clay Plant 1913 Postcard

La Moille (Lamoille), IL

20141017-20 0173 Not every day is sunny

La Moille, IL was incorporated in February 25, 1867. It had a population in 1900 of  576 and in 2000 of 773. (GenealogyTrails and Wikipedia) The railroad, CB&Q/Illinois Grand Trunk Railway, that went through the town was completed on July 23, 1872. The town was in a natural gas belt and "quite a number of her citizens heat and light their houses with this gas." Note the use of the present tense in the quote. It was written in 1906. (GenealogyTrails)

The railroad was abandoned in 1985. See the first part of Friction Bearings for closeups of the old wooden caboose. Fortunately, people are in the process of preserving the caboose and the depot. You can see in the second photo that they are working on the roof. The caboose was placed on the old right of way, so the RoW ran north of the depot.

Photo by Ray Tutaj Jr. from Grain Elevators, used with permission

A neighbor explained that ADM bought the grain elevator and tore it down. Fortunately, Ray Tutaj Jr. caught a picture of it before ADM tore it down.



Some depot photos from when people still used horses. The engines are not just steam engines, they are old steam engines. For example, they are still using slide valves. In fact the first photo is a 4-4-0 so it was probably built in the 1800s.

Photo by Jayson Tuntland from Depots

Photo from Depots

Update: John Joseph Walsh III posted 14 pictures of the restored depot. He reports they are still working on the caboose.

George Bower posted four photos with the comment: "Lamoille Illinois."

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Mark Llanuza posted
This view of the CB&Q station i took back in 1977 ,I went back again to line my old photo back up again in 2005 ,the main line is now gone only a caboose on display at la Molillie IL.
James L. Ludwig North Central Illinois Model Railroad Club is now located there-they have volunteered to restore the depot and waycar.
Dennis DeBruler An excellent example of a win-win.

Bill Molony posted three photos with the comment:

Every so often, we hear about a former Burlington Route wood waycar in north central Illinois that at one time apparently belonged to the Blackhawk Railway Historical Society. As much as we'd like to claim it, we don't own it.
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy 14570 was a typical design wood waycar (that is what the Burlington called their "cabooses") built in the 1880s. After being retired from active service, 14570 ended up in private hands. The caboose eventually ended up in the town of La Moille, Illinois, located on one of the Q's now-abandoned branchlines that used to blanket rural Illinois. It sits in front of the town's 19th-century CB&Q depot, miles from any active railroad lines.
Sometime in the early 21st century, sources on the Internet started attributing ownership to "Blackhawk Chapter NRHS." We have no paperwork or any other proof of ownership, so it's current status does not involve us. It briefly appeared for sale on an equipment broker's website. A 2014 article in the local paper has the caboose and depot being worked on by volunteers from the community.
We will continue to follow up on this mystery...

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Dennis DeBruler posted three photos with the comment:

I have not noticed jump-form bin construction in the Midwest. But I was unaware of it and not looking for it either.
While I was checking my notes on La Moille, IL, concerning the CB&Q waycar (caboose), I noticed that the grain bins used jump-form construction. ADM bought the elevator and tore it down. The first photo is from a Mark Llanuza posting, https://www.facebook.com/groups/370207820054225/permalink/459320094476330/I found a 4/12/2005 Global Earth image that confirms there were gaps between the bins. It looks like they made the bins larger as they gained confidence with the construction technique. The depot is the building on the left side of the image. I picked the 4/12/2005 image because it had good resolution. The elevator is still intact in 2010, but only the jump-form bins are still standing in a 2011 image, and everything is gone in 2013.

1, a copy of Mark's photo above

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Anthony M Miranda posted
Preserved CB&Q caboose and depot at Lamoille, IL. on the long gone Mendota to Denrock Line in July of 2016.

Trenton Dominy: The building was bought by a local model railroad club and has been in a slow progression of restoration since 2015.

The story I was told one of the members had a heart attack a few years back and much of the work stopped on it but it’s still getting attention.

The caboose is a definite candidate for restoration but more funds are needed and people to work on it.

Newton, IL

(Information about the Newton Power Station is in "Generating Plant Smoke Plumes (Duke/Gibson + Newton).")

thepdf.info sums up the history Newton, IL, very well:

Newton was founded in 1828, platted in 1835, and incorporated in 1865.  It was an important trading center until the East-West railroad went through Olney and shifted commerce there.  That is what prompted the segment of the G&M between here and Olney to be built first.  Newton is also where the PD&E crossed the line that would become the IC's line to Indianapolis; "The High-Dry".  It also had to cross the Embarrass River at this location yet again.  If one projects the line North-West from the city at the same angle that it enters it from the South-East, the line would have been a natural to follow on the West side of the Embarrass up to Toledo, never having to had to cross it once, let alone twice.  One wonders if this was the original plan.  The PD&E depot was on the Northwest corner of the diamond.

PD&E Abandonment

I waited until the leaves were off the trees and had my wife drive the stretch of IL-130 from Olney to Newton so that I could take pictures of the abandoned right-of-way (RoW). There is no place to pull off and stop near the wood trestle ruins, so I tested how well the camera could lock on a focus from a moving vehicle. The focus did OK. But I did a grab shot before I had the passenger window down, so I caught my reflection in that picture. But the pictures through the windshield came out OK.

20150119 0128

The abandoned line has a high-tension power line next to it. That is how I spotted the RoW in the first place. In a satellite image, you can see the right-of-way continued southwestish across a field after IL-130 turned south.

The RoW then joins IL-130. The grade is to the right (eastish) of the power line. In this stretch, the farmer has removed the grade. But further north, you can still see some of the grade.

And by the time you get to the woods, it has been left intact.

Along the woods you can see some small cuts and fills. As we get closer to the creek, it is just fill and...

Satellite

...the fill gets deeper until we get to the wood trestle ruins (below).

Then we are back to fill. Is that brown line on top of the fill a rail?

Satellite

There is a segment of the PD&E that goes south of the CN/IC track, but from what I can see in a satellite image, that remnant ends at an industry north of the trestle. Normally when they pull up the rails, they pull up all of them because they are worth money as steel scrap and because it probably changes the property tax rate. A photo in thepde.info was taken before the trees had a chance to cover everything.

Grain Elevators

Satellite

At least one of the grain elevators next to the CN/IC/Indianapolis Southern Railroad  must be a major shipper of grain because when I was studying the satellite map I saw a cut of covered hoppers on a siding off the mainline.

Satellite

Satellite

And there were a lot covered hoppers parked on the PD&E remnant. But it has to be a lot more efficient loading cars by the Tgm Grain elevator that is west of town because it has a long siding.

Satellite

I included the bare white area in the lower-right corner because the photo below shows they were building a ground storage facility there. Remember, 2014 was a second year of bumper corn crops and the harvest was predicted to be more than the nation's storage capacity because there was still corn stored from the previous years harvest. See pictures near the end of Onley' elevator to see how this pile of corn will be covered with plastic when the facility is full. If you look at a corporate photo, you will notice that area was still a farmer's field.

By November 2014, the "corn pile area" was finished, and it was being filled.

20141108 0339c

I zoomed into the camera's resolution from another photo to see the truck actively dumping grain into a portable auger elevator. You can see the grain coming out the end of the elevator on top of the pile. The truck is unusual because it is a regular construction dump truck rather than a grain truck.
 

Jim Pearson Photography added
August 28, 2020 - Waiting on the fresh crew on a CN freight road pull west from the grain mill at Newton, Illinois and head for Effingham on CN’s Effingham Subdivision. Thanks to isaiah Bradford, Mike Jacobs, David Higdon Jr and everyone else on helping on our trip today in the Decatur, Illinois area!

CN/IC Unit Grain Train

On this trip back to the Chicago area, I went west and north of Newton on IL-33 to Dieterich. I soon encountered an oncoming CN train. I took a couple of "car" pictures to establish that it was a unit grain train.