Sunday, October 25, 2015

Dixon, IL: UP/C&NW/G&C 1850 Freight House

20150913,16 4761, looking West along the north side
When driving a "field trip" to take pictures of the industrial railroad buildings, sometimes getting lost is serendipity. I went through Dixon on a trip from Dekalb's coaling tower, Rochelle's railroad park, and Nelson's coaling tower. While trying to follow some detour signs through Dixon, IL, I drove past an old, long, low building with multiple big doors in the side. Since the name was Freight House Kitchen & Bath, I pulled into the first parking lot I found. As with the IC Freight House in Mattoon, IL, the person working inside was well aware of the historical significance of the building. He said it was built in 1850 as Galena & Chicago Union's freight house and that it had 18-inch walls.

He brought out an old photo and pointed out that there used to be tracks close to the building on the south side as well.

Below are a couple of views of the south side. As you can see, just the mainline tracks remain and they are some distance from the freight house.
Jim Arvites posted
View of the old Chicago & North Western Railway's Freight House at Dixon, Illinois circa 1874. The building is still standing today.
(Vintage Dixon, IL)

Aerial photo from ILHAP
A 1939 aerial photo also has a road, rather than tracks, south of the freight house. (I included quite a bit of the industrial buildings and the IC tracks because they are interesting. The freight house is the building in the center near the bottom.) The IC tracks on the right where part of the original charter line, and they are now abandoned. An 1891 Sanborn Map does show that Depot Avenue terminated at a passenger station that was east of the freight house and the road did not cross the tracks. Furthermore, there were tracks on both sides of the freight house. It is interesting that the passenger station was torn down by 1939.

Sheet 10 of Sanborn Map

(Facebooked on timeline 20151028)

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