Rose Hill, IL

Like Hidalgo, IL, I found Rose Hill when I noticed a commercial grain elevator that initially looked like it was in the middle of corn fields as I was driving north on IL-130. So I turned west when I got to IL-6. As I approached the town, you could clearly see a hill in the road where it went up to meet the grade of the former IC/PD&E. Below are views looking North and South, respectively.

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At first, I assumed this was a local grain elevator since it has not had railroad service for a few decades. But it is rather large for a local elevator, and I could not find a building in which it would have the grinders and mixers needed to prepare livestock feeds. And then I noticed that it has a loading bin over the old right-of-way. And another loading bin with the second complex to the west. These loading bins would allow them to quickly fill a grain truck. But the grain elevator to the north in Greenup doesn't have a connection to the CSX/Penn railroad past that town. However, there are a couple of rail-served (CN/IC/Indianapolis Southern) elevators south near Newton.

Satellite

Because this line has been abandoned for a while, it demonstrates that if a farmer does not claim the right-of-way, it becomes full of trees. What I find interesting is that some farmers do claim the right-of-way and make it part of their fields whereas others didn't bother. The satellite image is on the north side of town. The following is a picture of the north side of town. Then I zoom into the trees that are on the right-of-way.























Since this blog is Nature as well as Towns, I include a sunset we caught a little later during this trip. The digital camera with the default settings did a good job of catching the colors that caught our eye.