Cairo, IL: Mobile & Ohio Freight House and Depot

John P. Kohlberg posted
There's just not a whole lot of downtown Cairo stuff. I do not know who took this image, but it is supposedly dated 1967.

The comments explain that GM&O moved their passenger depot to North Cairo after World War II but kept their freight operations down in Cairo.

John P. Kohlberg commented on his posting

The "blank space" between the indicated tracks and the levee was full of Big Four tracks. The triangle on the right in this 1938 aerial is 8th, Cedar and Jefferson.

1938 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

Springfield, IL: Railfanning Spots

Joseph Partain posted a question concerning good railfanning spots in Springfield, IL. I'm recording some of the answers for my reference.

Adam DeJaynes Most traffic converges at Hazel Dell on the south end of town. That's where the NS and UP operate a short section of joint track north to Iles. UP traffic is up substantially with their intermodal facility opening in Joliet. Plus they host 10 Amtrak trains daily. Further north, both roads are crossed by the former C&IM on the north end of town.

Alex Moon Hazel Dell and Isles are decent spots, KCS runs on Wednesdays, CN 3 times a week and IMRR usually has 1-2 coal trains a day plus the roadswitcher.

Todd Pearson Where is KCS coming from? Never seen them. Might have to pay attention
Alex Moon From the south, they run via NS to CN connection at Iles, work in Springfield for a couple hours then head back.
Eric Fromm Todd Pearson They come from Roodhouse. They interchange with the CN at Cockrell which is just southwest of SPI. They also go to SHOPS (IMRR) to interchange with IMRR.
Blake Dooley Todd, if you take the big curve at Hazel Dell going west you'll hit another CP called KC Junction. That's where they come from.

Adam DeJaynes KCS (former GWWR) and CN (former IC) also use that joint trackage but appearances are much less.

Blake Dooley Hazel Dell and Iles are the best spots in Springfield you are gonna get in terms of total traffic. Every railroad in Springfield with the exception of the I&M passes through those control points. Iles is the morning spot, and HD is the evening spot. Other cool photo locations are Shops Tower on North Grand and the abandoned CNW bridge that goes over the NS in Curran.

Kenneth Baker on the ne side of spfd theres the nsw that heads east through riverton the old it/ ic that runs to clinton il, on the north side is up/amtrak
to the nw , theres the i&m to havana il
up and nw exiting spfd to the so. and west to the so theres the i&m/ cn to cimic and eastward

Danville, TN: A town torn down by the TVA

While studying the Memphis, Clarksville & Louisville Railroad, I came across a statement that the first trains started running in 1861 when the bridge across the Tennessee River was completed. But I had a hard time finding Danville. When I Google it, the closest one offered was in Kentucky. Later, I discovered that if I explicitly specified "danville tn" I got the correct area. The problem is that the town no longer exists. It was torn down in 1942 by the TVA to make room for the Kentucky Lake when the Kentucky Dam's reseviour finished filling in 1945.

When the 120 residents were notified in 1937 that there town was going to be wiped off the map "up to 24 trains per day passed through in the 1930s. The community boasted a steamboat landing, several stores and saloons, a post office, hotel, and Masonic hall." [ExploreKentuckyLake]

St. Francisville, IL: Wabash Cannon Ball Bridge

20161215 6936

I have already done a "normal" posting of the Wabash Cannon Ball Bridge. This posting is more of a travelogue of my journey to get my own pictures.

Our GPS routes us down IL-130 through Evansville when we go to Florida, so setting St. Francisville, IL as a destination did not take us too far out of our way. When we approached St. Francisville, we started seeing signs guiding us to the "toll bridge." Unfortunately, we missed the sign pointing us north and followed Main Street east to its dead end at the river.

The "port" sign and the swing span in the bridge reminds me how important canal and steamboat transportation was in the first half of the 1800s when railroads had yet to be developed.

We backtracked and found the sign indicating the left turn off Main Street. The toll was just one dollar. I'm happy to pay a dollar as long as it is used to help maintain and preserve this bridge. (The New Harmony Bridge is an example of tolls going into people's pockets rather than bridge maintenance, and it was closed rather soon after we had a chance to drive over it. And it is evidently still closed.)

When we got to the part of the road that used to be the Big Four branch between St. Fancisville and Vincennes, they did widen the earth fill to be two lanes wide, but just two lanes. There were NO shoulders. (I also see you have a clear view of the splatter on the windshield. But you can see there is no place to pull over to take a clear shot.)

I knew the bridge was just one lane. I did not know there was a trestle over a flood plain that was also one lane.
This is the view to the south about half way across the trestle. So the flood plain is really a wetlands.

We asked the man in the toll booth if there were access roads that would allow us to get a side view of the bridge. He said there was one near the end of the bridge. It was wide enough that we could at least pull off the road. But there was no way I would drive the van down the "access road." But it was an easy walk. (There were some oil tanks just to my right is why this area was "developed.")

I had turned off my lights so that the cars on the other side of the bridge would proceed to use the bridge. This photo not only shows that the bridge is indeed used, it shows the extra width of the pier that holds the swing span.

This is an overview shot from the "access road." Note the long tree trunk running all the way across the picture about a third of the way up. The next picture was taken while standing on that driftwood. You will also find a car in about everyone of these pictures that I took. There was a rather steady stream of cars, especially westbound. (I arrived near evening "rush hour.")

This is the "best shot" that I used at the top of this posting. I had the sun to my back, but once again I'm disappointed in how the pictures turned out. I'm learning that winter shots are shades of brown.

I turned to my right to capture the pile of driftwood that was caught by the trees on the shore. At times the water of the Wabash must get high and fast. This picture also shows the trunk I was on (in the lower-right corner) extended further away from the bridge. When I was younger, I might have considered walking out on that trunk to get a better angle of the truss spans. But it is true that your balance becomes less stable as you grow older. There was no way on God's green earth I was going to walk out over those jagged limbs rather far below the trunk. I might break the camera if I fell.

My wife caught this view as we entered the truss spans. First of all, you can tell it is a Pratt Truss because the thin diagonal members indicate tension forces and the built-up V-lattice vertical members indicate compression forces. Note how light these members are compared to the heavy members of most railroad truss bridges that have survived to the 21st century. Big Four did not use very big steam locomotives on this little branch. But a bridge designed for even small steam locomotives is plenty strong for cars if well maintained.

A view to catch the width of the river that also catches how thin the tension members are. The use of a Pratt truss indicates the bridge is modern enough to be built with steel instead of iron.

I asked my wife to not spare the electrons while we crossed so she included an upstream view as well. You will note that my hands are in the proper 10-2 position. I don't always drive that carefully, but driving over this bridge had my full attention. It was not scary like the Hummer Bridge, but it does hold your focus. Note I had my lights on so that cars on the other side would know it was occupied.

A shot that makes me appreciate that the sun did not catch the spots on the windshield in some of the views. This is probably the east end of the swing span because the members are more heavy duty.

Below I take advantage of a 32-megapixel camera having far more resolution than a web site can use. That is, I digitally zoomed in on the swing span. The heavy diagonals as well as verticals reminds me that it is supported from the center when open and fromboth  the center and both ends when closed. I think this indicates the span is old enough that the engineers really didn't know what was happening with the stresses so they threw a lot of steel at the problem. Another indication that this design is from the mid 1800s is it has two regular trusses hung from a center tower. A swing span built in the late 1800s would have a square tower built over the turntable with four strong compression members at the corners of the tower and the side trusses would not be symmetrical. Examples of the later design is the ICwest and Illinois Northern Bridges.

I include a closeup of the near Pratt truss because it is a good example of how the diagonals, other than the ends, slant towards the center.

Franklin, TN: Carnton Plantation & Civil War Battle and L&N Freighthouse

Plantation: (3D Satellite)

L&N Freighthouse: (Satellite)

3D Satellite

The Carnton Plantation served as a field hospital after the Battle of Franklin. The house has been restored to the civil war period, including some of the original furniture donated back to the house by the descendants. Also, they have built a building to house a gift shop and an exhibit on the civil war battle. The battle was part of a last gasp effort to retake Nashville, which fell early in the war. Of the 40,000 combined soldiers, there were 10,000 casualties. 600 who needed surgery were brought to the plantation. 300 were in the house, and the other 300 were on the grounds.

I confirmed with the guide that surgery, in practice, meant amputation. He explained that the soft lead bullet used in that war would shatter when it struck a bone creating shrapnel that in turn shattered, not just broke, the bone. Chloroform and nitrous oxide were available for anesthetics. There were 10 doctors, and they could do an amputation in about 10 minutes. The blood stains have been sanded off the first floor, but you can still see blood stains on the second floor. Particularly in a corner where they surmised the amputated arms and legs were piled. (You could not throw them out the window because people were also operating on the grounds.)

The federal artillery had a range of about a mile. It did not reach the plantation house. But later when one of the trees removed from the northern part of the property was burned in a fireplace, a dud cannonball in the firewood exploded. So the cannonballs were landing rather close to the house.

As was common practice after a battle, the dead were hastilly buried where they fell in shallow graves because the army needed to move on to the battle near Nashville. Later, when limbs and bodies would start appearing after heavy rains, a Texan was paid $5 a body to dig up the body and properly rebury it in a private cemetery created on the plantation next to the family cemetery. They showed us the book that was written to record which lot each body was buried in. For decades, the descendants would help visiting relatives and friends of the dead find the lot of their loved one so that they could find closure.

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L&N Freighthouse

Dale Proctor posted two photos with the comment: "1858 Tennessee & Alabama Railroad freight building in Franklin Tenn., 1990."

Nathan Day: My hometown. For some reason the L&N left the freight depot behind but tore down the passenger depot. It’s been a hopeless search for Information/photos of the Franklin depot.

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Street View, Jul 2019

It is so nice when I find a good candidate on the topo map and then find a building in that spot on a satellite map.

1949 Franklin Quad @ 24,000

Nathan Day commented on Dale's post

Morris, IL: Depot and 1953 demolition of a 1921 Rock Island coaling tower

(see below for satellite)

Frank Smitty Schmidt posted
Morris IL, Nov 1953. A Rock Island coaling tower over the main line getting taken down.
Jack Franklin An example of why some coaling towers are still standing. Too much grief to bring them down.
Also another one over the former C&NW tracks at Clyman Jct WI.
Gary Sprandel Supposedly the detonation had been carefully set to blow the support legs in a manner that would drop the tower neatly to the side of the line with minimal disruption to traffic. At the last moment the RI promotions department film guys got the bright idea that it would look even better if some of the left over explosives were to be rigged at the hoist house at the top of the tower and when the charges were set off much to the horror of the the guy on the film crew the "show" charges countered enough of the actual demolition charges to drop the entire tower right on the tracks.
Harold J. Krewer Gary Sprandel is correct. This did NOT end well for the railroad or the demolition company. Double-track main blocked until the main structure could be broken up and hauled away. IIRC in the meantime they did manage to get some traffic through via a siding off to the right in the photo.
Harold J. Krewer Thirty years later, the SP/SSW learned this same lesson the hard way when they tried to blow an old RI coal dock on the Golden State Route.
Moral of the story: Rock Island coal docks were built tough!!
[Note the water tower on the right.]
Bob Frasco posted with a wrong comment

Frank commented on his posting
You can still see traces of it today.
[Satllite]

 

Barriger

Barriger

I found that location south of the old strip mine that is northeast of town. It must be the tower in the upper-right corner of this old aerial. I'm not sure which of the "blobs" along the track would be the water tower.

1940 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

1940 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

Given the water tower on the right in the photo, I thought the coaling tower was south of the depot, which now appears to house the Grundy County Corn Festival. But Frank corrected me. That was an old grain elevator.

Frank Smitty Schmidt commented on his above posting
This is the old elevator by the depot in Morris.

Bill Molony posted
This is the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad passenger depot in Morris, as it looked in about 1907.

Raymond Storey posted
MORRIS ILL

The elevator was still standing in 1976.

William Shapotkin posted
On May 16, 1976, photographer Joe Pierson visited the Morris, IL station on the Rock Island. The structure (still-standing in 2021 to the best of my knowledge) still served four psgr trns a day at the time of this photo. Wm Shapotkin Collection (shapotkin153)
Dennis DeBruler: It is interesting that the wood grain elevator made it all the way into the 1970s.

Dennis DeBruler commented on Raymond's post

It looks like the main part of the depot has been preserved.

https://www.google.com/.../data=!3m6!1e1!3m4...

William Shapotkin posted three photos with the comment:

The last stop Joe McMillan and I made our way back to Chicago from Morton, IL was the Morris station on "The Mighty Fine Line." As it was raining terribly, only got shots of the south side of the station (and the nearby EJ&E caboose). One has to ask, had the ROCK joined Amtrak (thus dumping its last two intercity trains on May 1, 1971), would all these stations have continued standing? One can only wonder and be thankful that this fine structures are still with us today.

William Shapotkin Photos dated April 30, 2023.

 

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CLPhotography posted

After a round of heavy thunderstorms, Iowa Interstate 702 and 519 lead business car “Hawkeye” on an eastbound ferry move by the former Rock Island depot in Morris, IL. The railroad was deadheading their owner’s car to Chicago where it’ll hitch a ride on Amtrak to Denver, CO for the annual ASLRRA convention. 

Morris, IL 

2025.04.01

Chris Lastovich shared

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1940 Aerial Photo from ILHAP, it was a little northeast of Morris, IL
Look in the upper-right corner by the surface coal mine for the coal tower.

These photos are from a posting of 50 pictures documenting the demolition of the Rock Island coaling tower. 

a
Note the temporary track being built on the left.

b
They have already removed the unloading shed and elevator. They have installed braces on the left so that it won't fall on the temporary track. The "blob" in front of the water tower is a shovel with the bucket facing us. You can see the operator leaning out of a window watching the train.

c
There are several photos of the workers removing the track from under the tower. I chose this one because of the wrecking ball in the background.

d
Notice Mr. Hands-on-Hips manager

e
Judging by the way he is walking on the ties near the right side of the photo, I don't think he gets out of the office very often. Of course, it is a big deal to shut down the mainline for this long. On the middle column on the left side we can see white spots where they have already drilled and installed explosives.

f
Getting ready for the "energetic felling."

g
It is not just the tracks that they are taking out of service. It looks like the signalling department is taking advantage of this outage to replace a crossarm.

h
Moving the equipment and men away for the big boom.

i
BOOM

(Update: a previous posting of the "BOOM" photo had some comments that explain why the tower dropped onto the mainline instead of to the side as planned.)

j

k

l
It fell awful close to the temporary track. It looks like decades of coal dust is escaping.

m
Now all of the trains that had been held up can creep past the tower starting with the passenger trains because they were still considered the highest priority in 1953.

n
Is he swinging the Bucyrus-Erie bucket sideways as a wrecking ball in a confined space? Or is he just moving into position to dig out some debris.

o
It does seem they are using the bucket to help chew away the concrete wall.

p
Finally, we get to see the wrecking ball in full swing.

q
And the shovel doing the job it was designed for --- moving debris.
(This is the last image in the collection.)