Thursday, March 10, 2016

Danville, IL: Railroad Hub

Below is a Bing satellite image because they label railroads as well as roads and because it is old enough to show some routes that have been abandoned. It is very tedious trying to paint the routes with colors, but it occurred to me that since Bing shows the routes, all I have to do is add some colored dots to identify the routes.

Purple: CSX/L&N/C&EI
Yellow: NS+Abandoned+CSX/NYC/BigFour/Peoria & Eastern
Red: CSX+Abandoned/Egyptian
Orange: KBS+Abandoned/Milwaukee/Chicago, Terre Haute & Southern
Blue: NS/Wabash

The purple rectangle shows where the C&EI Oaklawn Shops were. The facilities are now used for freight car repair.
(Update: Wyton Tower was on the west side of town where the Big Four P&E route briefly joined the Big Four Egyptian route.)

Satellite plus Paint
James Boudreaux posted
Danville,IL. notice the Wabash,NW now NS tracks,at photo top; C&EI station middle left...photo date unknown

Richard Fiedler shared
Randy Rippy And at the bottom of the photograph, running from left to right, are the New York Central/Peoria & Eastern (nee-IB&W) tracks.

Concerning the Egyptian line, the part north of the upper big-red dot was NYC whereas the part south of the lower big-red dot was Big Four then NYC. The north part is now abandoned. The Google Road Map shows that a remnant south of Liberty Lane Road existed. But looking at the satellite image confirms that it is now abandoned. Some of the bridges indicate that the route used to have two tracks through Danville. The south part is now owned by CSX. Looking at an IDOT map, it looks like CSX uses the former Egyptian route to get to Paris and then uses another former Big Four route to get to Terre Haute where it probably joins its former C&EI mainline.

Concerning the CTH&S, the KBS owns the route north of where it connects to NS at the Newell label on the map. According to a satellite may, the route continues south until it connects to the CSX tracks. The SPV Map shows the segment between Wabash and P&E as abandoned by the Milwaukee. Maybe KBS rebuilt it so that it could interchange with CSX as well as NS. The part south of Walz is abandoned, but I could identify land scars of the route to place the orange dots.

Road Map
Concerning the P&E, Google indicates it goes west and terminates just before an unnamed road. But the satellite image indicates it is abandoned back to just west of County Road 1300 E. The bridge over I-74 still exists. That is a testament to the expense of removing a bridge, or there is a rail-to-trail movement in progress. I don't care about the I-74 bridge, but there is a rather long bridge that looks worthy of getting pictures before it disappears since it is no longer used. The east end of the P&E was owned by WRC according to the 2005 SPV Map to Olin, IN. Unfortunately, their Appendix does not include an entry for WRC. And a Google search for "WRC railroad" comes up with Wasatch Railcar Repair. But it appears WRC is gone anyhow because an IDOT map indicates CSX now operates that remnant
to serve at least Flex-N-Gate Covington. The CSX/C&EI and NS/Wabash lines are intact.

Satellite
C&EI had branch that went south through Maring, Grape Creek, Steelton, Indianola, Sconce, and then headed west to the C&EI route now owned by UP. This route was abandoned quite a while ago by MoPac. You can see a tree line curve away from the Wabash until it gets lost in a forest. I wondered if it crossed the Wabash and the P&E to get to a C&EI connector with its mainline. But I checked an old aerial photo and it does show the branch joined the Wabash. So C&EI would have to pay Wabash for a short stretch of trackage rights to get to this branch.

1940 Aerial Photo from ILHAP
Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad Historical Society posted
This early morning photo is probably train #96 the Dixie Mail northbound out of the Danville, IL station in July, 1948. The Dixie Mail was due out of Danville at 5:11 AM. The engine is crossing the Wabash Railroad tracks on the north side of Danville.

safe_image for 16:52 Video
At 11:05 a mention of the Milwaukee Road and trackage rights with the NY Central.
Phil Boldman: Yes they had trackage rights over the Danville secondary. Highland to wyton for sure.
[I caught him talking about Milwaukee using NYC at 3:46. Then at 11:05 he talks much more about the Milwaukee.]



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