Hidalgo, IL

I've learned that small commercial grain elevators are an indicator of abandoned railroads. And I knew that the abandoned Peoria, Decatur and Evansville Railway was near parts of IL-130. So when I saw an old grain elevator, I turned west on IL-13 and found the town of Hidalgo, IL. The above image is from the side of their Post Office.

The image to the right is looking southish along the abandoned right-of-way.

Looking north and including the grain elevator.

When I first studied a satellite image, I was confused because there were more circles in the image than there were bins in the picture. Then I realized that the southern five circles are just foundations, not bins.

Moving a little to the east to capture the vacant land that is now next to the right-of-way. I have discovered that the PD&E is well documented and it provides a detailed list of the railroad facilities that would have occupied this land. The town was reached by the railroad in 1877 and the railroad laid out the town the following year. The track was closed Aug. 1, 1982, and removed later that year.

ILHAP

Before I found the www.thepde.info list of RR facilities, I found a 1938 aerial photo. It surmise that the black rectangle at the intersection of the railroad and the state highway is the depot.

Studying the grain elevator once again demonstrates how today's satellite images from space have better resolution than aerial photos in the late 1930s. In this case, I think the black circles are the abandoned bin foundations. Where these poured during the roaring 1920s and then abandoned because of the depression; or were they poured closer to 1938, but construction was aborted because of the war?

Satellite

The shadows in a Bing map clearly shows which circles are bins/silos and which are just foundations.

Because of the rather decrypt shape of the elevator (below) and because the capacity is not much bigger than many farmers currently have, I'm going to assume that it has been abandoned.