Monee, IL: Illinois Central Cut and Depot

(Satellite, it is long gone)

The depot before the cut was made was on the east side of the tracks. More photos of the 4-track cut through Monee.

Bill Molony posted
This is the Illinois Central Railroad's cut and depot at Monee, Illinois.
The cut was completed in 1923, and the dirt removed from Monee was used to elevate the IC tracks at Matteson, Illinois.
This photograph was taken looking north from the Main Street bridge.
Fullton Grace Back in the 70's I was a delivery supply driver for IBT, and I made deliveries to the telephone building in Monee . The tracks looked the same, but I don't remember seeing any depot down below there. Passenger service to that town must have ended awhile back. Anyone one know the history of that depot and passenger service to Monee?
Bill Molony By 1950, only a single all-stops local passenger train stopped at the IC station at Monee. All of the through passenger trains passed by without stopping.

Bill Molony posted
This photo is of the completed cut through Monee, Illinois, with the new depot on the left - circa 1925.
Wayne Parker That station was quite an edifice. Anybody know how's long it was there? Did it burn?
John Childs To bad the company wasted all that money. They just didn't know they didn't need all those tracks.
Bill Molony The volume of train traffic on the IC in the 1920's justified having all those tracks through Monee.
John Childs I know, just remembering when I started that there were 37 chain gang turnd out of Markham. Down to the handful now.
Wayne Parker And now there's only one set of tracks good through there.......
[And now some Illinois politicians are trying to lean on Canadian National to not delay Amtrak trains because their track is congested with freight trains. CN evidently needs to add more and/or longer sidings.]

Bill Molony posted
Illinois Central 4-8-2 Mountain-type #2530 passing the Monee, Illinois depot with a southbound freight train - 1953.
The 2530 was built by the Lima Locomotive Works in 1921.

You hear about Illinois being flat. And that is true in some places. But a series of glacial advances and retreats have left moraines across Northern Illinois. So the IC did some serious cut&fill in the 1920s to improve the grade of their mainline. (Once again I am amused because the people who charted the IC in the 1850s thought the mainline was up the middle of the state and the route to Chicago was a "branch." The Chicago branch was controversial and almost did not get built.)

Instead of leaving the depot at street level as they did in Paxton and Mattoon, they made the cut wide enough to build a depot in the cut.

Skip Luke commented on a post:

South of Monee was three tracks to Otto (double track with center track reversible traffic,) then two to Champaign. After CTC, we had two South of Stuenkel, to Indian Oaks , three from Indian Oaks to Otto through KKK, then two to Champaign. Early CTC from Otto to Gilman. Before CTC, the towers had controlled traffic in each direction on both tracks Otto to Gilman.

David Wojtowicz Yeah what I'm seeing looks four tracks wide. North of Homewood it still is thanks to Metra so I can imagine it looked like that farther down too.
Skip Luke We once had eight tracks North of Homewood (4 commuter, two passenger, two freight.) 
.... Skip Luke, retired dispatcher.

Dennis DeBruler But this is the Chicago Branch. I think only the original charter route up the middle was land grant. (Update: Thanks to Erik for the correction: both the mainline and the "branch" were land grant routes.) IC pioneered the notion, but Wisconsin Central and Michigan Central quickly jumped on the bandwagon. The irony is that most of the mainline route is now abandoned.
Erik Coleman Dennis DeBruler No the original charter ratified on Feb 10, 1851 included both the Cairo-Galena "mainline" as well as the Chicago Branch. Upon completion of the charter in 1856, it was the world's longest railroad.
Dennis DeBruler Erik Coleman So the "branch" also got alternating sections of land?
Erik Coleman Dennis DeBruler Yes, all the way to Chicago.

1939 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

An article about the impact of the cut on the town (source)