Towns and Nature: Sorento, IL: Junction Tower: BNSF/CB&Q vs. NS/NKP/Cloverleaf and Depots

1938 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

The CB&Q went northwest/southeast and the NKP/Cloverleaf went southwest/northeast through Sorento, IL. Norfolk Western or Norfolk Southern abandoned the NKP segment to the southwest. I spent a lot of time trying to reconcile the geographic details of the pictures and the 1938 photo. Because it took me a long time, I forced myself to spend more time on it. I'm getting old, and I evidently need to exercise my brain.

Mike Finney posted

Mike Finney posted, NKP depot
Looking from the tower.

The comments indicate this is looking west along the NKP and the building is the NKP depot.. Since the depot is on the south side and the tower is on the same side that would put the tower south of the NKP.

The signalling pipe to control the semaphore that you can see in the distance is on the north side of the tracks. The codeline is on the south side.

Mike Finney posted, CB&Q depot
CB&Q depot and the town of Sorento from the NKP tower.

Because there is only one north/south road in town crossing the CB&Q, this view is looking CB&Q east so the depot is on the south side.

So these two photos would establish that the tower is geographically south of the diamond. And that is consistent with the 1939 photo. I marked the NKP depot in blue, the CB&Q depot in red and the tower in yellow. I can't actually see a building, but something is casting that long shadow. And the two depot pictures from the tower establish the tower is close to the tracks.

Above photo plus Paint

Mike Finney posted
Photo says looking east CB&Q.
Not sure what the blury left side is about. My photo looks ok.

The photo says CB&Q east. And I agree with that because if it was NKP east, there would be another connector coming in on the right side of the photo. If it was CB&Q west, the connector would be on the other side. If it was NKP west, there would be no connectors.

So the train is on the connector in the geographic east quadrant. Note the motor car shed that has the little tracks from the building to the mainline with boards between the rails pm the mainline to help turn the motor car. They must have had a lot of motor cars here because I see at least one, if not two, parked outside. Also of note is the long signal pipe that controls the semaphore in the distance.

But that long pipe, plus those that turn to go down the south side of the NKP indicates the tower was west of the diamond. But we just concluded the tower was south of the diamond.

If I assume the photo is reversed, then the connector is coming in from the right and we are looking at CB&Q west. I drew a rough diagram of a reversed picture with the tracks in red and the signalling rods in yellow. (There are more signalling rods turning west then I bothered to draw.) The long diagonal red is CB&Q and the foreground track is NKP. Now the tower is south of the diamond. And one of the westerly rods on the north side of the NKP tracks is consistent with the one we saw in the above NKP depot picture. But why there are so many other rods going west is still a mystery. All of the turnouts for the connections are on the east side.

I include the picture with a caboose because they are rare. Given the rods going under the NKP, this train would be eastbound.

Mike Finney posted
Going over the CB&Q

Mike posted this the next day. The depot would be NKP. The codeline going overhead is what clinched it for me.

Mike Finney posted
One more photo I found of
Sorento tower and depot.

DianeandSteve Grigg posted

Steve's comment:

This old water tower at Sorento sits on the south side of the former NKP tracks. It would not have been to far from the NKP-Clover Leaf depot. This was the first and ONLY three-legged water tower I have seen! You NKP modelers need to have one of these on your layouts!!!! I took this photo last February [2015].

(Update: I found a tripod water tower in Edwardsville as well.)

DianeandSteve Grigg posted

Steve's comment:

THANKS Mike Finney for all the recent GREAT photo posts!! Sorento is a very interesting area and last February Jacob Hortenstine, Brad Friese, Charles McKinney, and I (AKA - The Clover Leaf Gang) visited there. We had seen part of the old R-O-W from the "Devil's Eyebrow". The eyebrow portion itself was south of the new main line and came off of what became Gilmore Siding. This older trackage came into Sorento's west side a little north of the new track alignment where the NKP/CB&Q Tower was built. Exactly where, we could not determine for sure. I firmly believe the Clover Leaf depot was moved from the old track location to just west of the tower as it appears in Mike's photos. Attached is a 1938 aerial survey photo that I cropped and added labels to. You may have to down load it and enlarge to see the details. It is amazing what these old aerial images reveal!!!

I believe his analysis agrees with mine.

Update: