Cedar Rapids, IA: Rock Island Depot & Roundhouse and Quaker Oats Plant

Depot: (Satellite)

Quaker Oats: (3D Satellite)

Roundhouse: (Satellite, remnants of the foundation are still visible.)

Street View

Roger Kujawa posted five photos with the comment: "The Rock Island’s Cedar Rapids, Iowa depot is now a Roofing contractor and very well kept. I believe track is now owned by the Union Pacific. 2021"

Robert Chitwood: It was built in 1961 when they demolished Union Station. After Amtrak started it became the yard office.

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When I saw some grain silos in the background of some of Roger's photos, I investigated. They are part of a huge Quaker Oats plant. And Cargill has a plant nearby.

3D Satellite

I wonder how many different additions are in this plant.

Blaine Clayton, Apr 2021

I wondered why Google had a Pepsico label on the map. I guess they are the current owners of Quaker.

Premier Iowa Tree Surgeon, Mar 2020

Springfield, IL: Amtrak/GM&O/ALton Depot

(Satellite)

Marty Bernard posted
GM&O Depot and Train, Springfield, IL on August 15, 1965
809A was an F3A built June 1947. Jim Ripley just commented, "Extra train. Bet it the local." I missed the white flags.

Ralcon Wagner: Thanks for sharing. This brings back so many childhood memories - I spent much of the mid-1960s watching trains here. This historical station actually dates back to the Lincoln Funeral days but was extensively remodeled around 1947 and again during the 1980s. The track the train is on is now gone (paved over) as are the side tracks closest to the camera. This remains a very busy station.

Ron Reiring: Ralcon Wagner The information I find says this depot was built in 1895, 30 or so years after Lincoln's funeral. Must have been a different depot, but of course I wasn't there.

Ralcon Wagner: Ron Reiring I stand corrected, Ron. I had thought I had seen an old photo of the funeral train by a similar structure. Thanks!

Brian Watt: Lots of detail in there for your mid-sixties era layout ... note the USPS two-tone mailbox. Railroads were still relevant to the USPS.

Marty Bernard share

Marty Bernard posted
Gulf Mobile & Ohio F3A #809A leads a freight slowly past the Springfield, IL depot on the warm afternoon of August 15, 1965.
Jon Roma: FYI, this is a northbound.
Marty Bernard shared

 

Dennis DeBruler commented on Marty's second share

One could argue that Springfield is not in the Chicago Area and that these photos belong in the RAILROAD HISTORY BUFFS OF ILLINOIS Group, but there is so much previously undocumented history in these photos that it is too hard to resist.

Per Jon Roma's comments on Marty's original post, the freight is running n/b past the depot (39°48'08.8"N 89°39'05.7"W). And the second photo is looking West along the B&O route and the caboose is s/b on the UP/GM&O/Alton route.

Can someone confirm the ownership of the "green" freight house?

Red: JA Tower

Yellow: GM&O Depot

Blue: Union Station

Orange: GM&O Freight House

Green: B&O Freight House

Noah Haggerty posted three photos with the comment:

The 1895-built Chicago & Alton railroad depot in Springfield, Illinois serves ten Amtrak trains per day, and these photos were taken on May 6, 2023. A mural painted by Louis Grell inside the station above the ticket office features a map of the GM&O. 

Unfortunately, a new transit center is being built a few blocks east of here and expected to open in 2026-27. The tracks might get ripped up, but the depot may be saved due to being on the National Register of Historical Places.

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Front of depot

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Ticket office & mural

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Waiting room

Martin G. Sorenson posted

Some Beautiful Railroad Architecture

Circa 1900. "Chicago & Alton R.R. station at Springfield, Illinois."

David Dote: Before it was modernized.

Rick F: Interesting seeing the streetcar tracks had to jump over the railroad tracks as they are no openings in the rails for them. Must have been a bumpy ride and they must have been horse drawn as I see they are paved between the rails on the streetcar line.

Andy Zukowski posted
Chicago & Alton Railroad Station in Springfield, Illinois. 1914
Richard Fiedler shared

 

Andy Zukowski posted
Chicago & Alton Railroad Depot in Springfield Illinois. 1908

Photo by CU Williams
Richard Fiedler shared

Mike Breski posted
GMO, Springfield, Illinois, 1958

Southbound Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad Alton Limited passenger train pulls into Springfield, Illinois, on August 30, 1958. Photograph by J. Parker Lamb, © 2015, Center for Railroad Photography and Art. Lamb-01-064-06

DESCRIPTION FROM PHOTO SOURCE

Jeffery Mead, Aug 2022

Springfield Model Railroad Club posted
Here's the northbound Alton Limited passing Springfield station en route to Chicago in May 1952.
Philip Anthony Kohler: Lincoln, Bloomington, Pontiac, Joliet, Chicago
Andrew Roth shared

 

Andy Zukowski posted
Gulf Mobile & Ohio Train No. 4 is coming to a station stop with the Alton Limited in Springfield, Illinois. 1952

Phil Shadid: Double track mainline in the 1950s, allowed the Alton Limited to make the St. Louis-Chicago run in 5:20. But by 1960, it took 5:30, and the name "Alton" was dropped; it became "the Limited." Does anyone know when the second main was eliminated?

Stuart B. Slaymaker: Phil Shadid : Early 60s, when they started ripping up the second main, and putting in the long passing sidings. They were a wonder to see in action. The remaining passenger trains rarely had to slow down, in a "running meet" situation.

Don Crimmin: I was the Amtrak District Supervisor of Stations, based in Springfield from November 1, 1976 until February 1978. Those were two terrible winters, weatherwise. Oh, boy, were those old Alton and GM&O ever railroaders! This was before Amtrak had taken over the T&E crews so the oldest seniority Gee-Mo men worked the jobs like Harold Feger and Jimmy Carmandy. And they accepted a long-haired, 25 year old wet-behind the ears Amtrak kid. Thanks guys, you were great.

Stuart B. Slaymaker: 100A is the second unit. It was still a Winton Powered EA in 1952. It was traded to EMD in 1953, and came back as an E-8M, with the same number. GM&Os only E-8.

Everett Lueck: The unit trailing #100 is the old original B&O EA unit originally number 52,, then 50, now GM&O #100A In the following year it would be rebuilt by EMD into a 2000 hp E-8m to better mate with the E-7's.

Bill Molony shared

Ray Schaller: Back in the day they showed pride in the equipment!

Jim Arvites posted
View of the old Gulf Mobile & Ohio Railroad passenger depot in Springfield, Illinois on March 12, 2023. The station, built in 1895 by the Chicago & Alton RR, is used by Amtrak today. In the near future the depot will be replaced by the Springfield-Sangamon Transportation Center, which is currently under construction, and expected to open in 2025.
(Keith Pokorny Photo)
Jerry Hund: What was wrong with this station?
Timothy Hawkeye Kane: Jerry Hund on the wrong set of tracks to accommodate high speed rail. Causes a lot of delays to downtown traffic anymore as well.
[To summarize some additional comments, the politicians in Springfield don't think they should put up with a fraction of the traffic congestion caused in Chicagoland by the trains.]
Ken Baker: Dwight Smith also noting the location was the same for the lincoln funeral train when the Row was the C&A.

Street View

Street View

Ross Brocksmith posted three images with the comment:

GM&O RR Station

Springfield 

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Gulfport, Mobile & Ohio Railroad

Is that an early electric vehicle charging station? 😉

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Image Source/Credit: 

Ernest Grassel Collection

Only seen in-person in the Local History Collection

Downtown Branch of Peoria Public Library

#peoriapubliclibrary  #peorialocalhistory  #ernestgrasselcollection

From Grassel’s volume titled  SOUTHEAST ILLINOIS

Richard Fiedler shared

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Noah Haggerty posted
The former Chicago & Alton depot at Springfield, IL seen at night during an Amtrak stop on January 7, 2026. A new station is planned to open a few blocks east of here in a year or less, leaving an uncertain fate for the station and Union Pacific line also being redirected.

Red Oak, IA: Restored CB&Q Depot

(Satellite)

 

Michael Emerson Avitt posted
CB&Q depot at Red Oak, Iowa.

I wonder if the town's grain elevator was behind the photographer.

Tom Nelson posted
C.B.&Q. Depot, Red Oak, IA. Postmark 1908 (postcard).

The tower in the background is at a junction with a CB&Q branch. BNSF still operates that branch to the south to a Green Plains grain plant in Shenandoah, IA.

Street View

It appears it is now a WWII Memorial Museum and community center. It is nice that BNSF let them use it without having to move it away from the tracks.

Marty Hogan, May 2021

depothill

Benwood, WV: 1852 National Tube/Wheeling Steel/Riverside Iron Works

(Satellite)

I continue to be amazed how much steel was processed along the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. Because steel was cast into ingots back then and reheated for rolling, rolling mills could be built away from the blast furnaces and steel converting furnaces (Kelly/Bessemer, open hearth and/or Basic Oxygen Furnace) that made the ingots. The raw material of ingots for rolling mills could economically be transported down the river. (Instead of ingots, the intermediate product might be blooms, billets or slabs.) 

Tom Andolona posted
This is an early photo of the furnace at Benwood not sure of what year it is it doesn’t have a date on it.

Daniel Neil Meyers: The Blast Furnace came down somewhere around 1957 or 58 I was very young and watched it from Harmony Hill with my dad.

"At Benwood, in 1888, Francis J. Hearne produced commercially the first steel pipe made in the United States. Today Benwood is the home of Wheeling Steel pipe and one of the world's most modern mills devoted exclusively to the manufacture of steel pipe. Slabs from Steubenville South are processed into skelp and then formed into pipe (1/2" to 4") by the continuous weld method. Wheeling also produces its own couplings and has facilities for galvanizing large tonnages of pipe. Wheeling's No. 2 continuous weld pipe mill produces pipe of various sizes at speeds from 450 to more than 1,000 feet per minute. Wheeling Steel pipe is widely used for most types of pipe line installations, radiant heating, snow removal systems, conduit and many fabricating purposes including scaffolding and tubular products." [OhioCountyLibrary, 1956]

History of the Ohio Valley posted
Manufacturing pipe at the Center Benwood Works of the Wheeling Steel Corporation - May, 1959
[Are those "sparks" blobs of hot steel flying through the air?]
John Slowikowiski shared

A predecessor steel company, Riverside Iron Works, started up a 75' x 10' blast furnace in 1872 that could produce 1000 tons of iron per week. That company then produced iron cut nails. In the late 1880s, they added a mill to make steel pipe to help meet the demand for pipes caused by the development of natural gas distribution, boiler tubes and indoor plumbing. National Tube Co. bought the plant in 1899 and soon installed a 500-ton blast furnace. In 1920 Wheeling Steel was formed from companies along the Ohio between Benwood at the south end and Steubenville, OH at the north end. By then, Benwood Works had two pipe mills, and it got its slabs from Steubenville South at Mingo Junction, OH. Wheeling Steel became part of Wheeling-Pittsburgh in 1968. Benwood Works was closed in July 1983. [AbandonedOnline]

Fourth of eleven photos in AbandonedOnline
Wheeling Steel Corporation’s Benwood Works is a former pipe mill that closed in 1984 in Benwood, West Virginia.

Leveltek Processing and JLE Industries now use the site. From what I can tell by the Leveltek's website, they take defective coils that otherwise would be scrapped and turn them into high quality coils by stretching them.

Leveltek

The website for JLE makes it appear to be a trucking company. But AbandonedOnline explains: in 2016, "JLE acquired the space to inspect and repair metal tubes used to drill oil and natural gas wells. JLE refurbished all overhead cranes, added new siding and insulation, poured new concrete flooring, and revamped the electrical system at the cost of $6 million."

Because I accessed some historical aerial photos to look for a coaling tower, I also grabbed some historical views of this plant.

EarthExplorer: Sep 1, 1957 @ 31,000; AR1VRD000020065

EarthExplorer: May 11, 1972 @ 24,000; AR1VCYD00020204

Mayflies

In case you thought I forgot that "Nature" was in the title of this blog.

I knew that cicadas can emerge in such large numbers that they can be a real nuisance. I didn't realize that mayflies could hatch in such large numbers that they can also be a nuisance. I know they live less than a day.

Brian Klawitter commented on Brandon's post
L&D 3 in 1999....seems like they're thinning out a bit.
Brandon Phillips: they claim their presence is a sign of a health river system.

Brandon Phillips posted four photos with the comment: "You know the mayfly hatch was bad last night when there is a mayfly slick on Lake Pepin."

Angel Binner: There has been at least 5+ hatches.

Vanessa Williams: They sure make a mess on the windshield and decks.

Ynot A Schulte: That’s alot of fish food better there than on the boat. We was at 19 fixin to make crew change had the boat all souged up the day before they was knee deep on top of wheelhouse that morning we was on a fire hose from daylight till the new crew showed up that was a crew change I’ll always remember.

Ynot A Schulte: It hadn’t happened this year but Hardin bridge has had to be cleaned off with snow plows before. [I couldn't find a Hardin Bridge that made sense for a Mississippi Towboats Group.]

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Brandon Phillips commented on his post
last night [July 20, 2021] up by pine bend
[I presume that we are looking at the output of his radar and that the two bright vertical green lines are the river's banks. And the "green smear" between them is a bunch of mayflies in flight. The only "pine bend" I found on the map would not have towboats in the vicinity. So I'm confused as to where this was located.]

Shoaf, PA: 200 beehive ovens ran until 1972

(Satellite)

Quoting the YouTube comments:

Check out this link of a 1970 Film of this exact location to see how coke was manufactured! http://www.lifeinwesternpa.org/cokeov... Today Enjoy a tour of the last great coke oven operations located in Shoaf Pennsylvania, south of Uniontown. This 200 oven operation closed for good in 1972 due to not meeting EPA standards. So ended a 100 year history of coke manufacturing in Southwestern PA. This operation could be a wonderful walking tour if not for the fact that what is under it is too valuable for the owners to turn over to tourism (a coal seam) Too Bad. Enjoy the best examples of complete coke ovens, with rails still in place for "larry cars" to load the coal through a trunnel hole in the top, rails running along the front of the ovens to allow the "mud car" to assist the mudders who would block up the opening for a 36 or 72 hour coke charge, the Railroad "Wharf" still intact between two banks of ovens that allowed the workers to easily deposit the cooked coke and send north to Pittsburgh. To realize what workers did for so little (often a $1 a day or worse--paid in company store scrip), a dirty, life shortening existance, which supported their families, is quite a humbling experience. Visit www.stuffthatsgone.com [domain was undefined] and the Coal and Coke Heritage Museum, located at Penn State University, Fayette Campus US 119 South, Uniontown, PA.

I presume these were the larry cars.

Screenshot

New Albany, IN: Rectangular Grain Elevator

(3D Satellite)

Street View

J.B. Rail Photog posted
07/15/2021 - Norfolk Southern train 223 with the Conrail Heritage Unit leading slowly approaches Tatum at New Albany, IN, as they head eastbound towards K&IT Junction passing up an old grain toward with the Ohio River paralleling the tracks makes for a wonderful backdrop.
[Note the I-64 bridge in the background.]

SteelRails posted
Union Pacific, UP 6808 GE AC44CW leading Norfolk Southern 224 passing by the remains of the old abandoned McDonald and Company Grain Elevator in New Albany, Indiana on April 15, 2023.