Illinois Terminal Railroad Company

Product Details

Historical Context

The Illinois Terminal Railroad Company (ITC) was a successor in interest to a series of interurban railroads that were consolidated in the early 1900s by businessman William B. McKinley into the Illinois Traction System (ITS), an affiliate of the Illinois Power and Light Company. The Illinois Traction System, at its height, provided electric passenger rail service to 550 miles (900 km) of tracks in central and southern Illinois. The system's Y-shaped main line stretched from St. Louis to Springfield, Illinois, with branches onward from Springfield northwest to Peoria and eastward to Danville. A series of affiliated street-level city trolley lines provided local passenger service in many of the cities served by the main line. The longest-lived segment was at East St. Louis area of the line descended from an Edwardsville-Alton interurban line bought by the Illinois Traction System in 1928. Because the Illinois Traction/Illinois Terminal traversed some towns on street trackage with very tight turns, freight operation required the use of short trains and special hardware. New bypass trackage was constructed around some towns for freight operation to partially solve this problem. Springfield was an example of this. In a few other towns, arrangements were made with a parallel steam railroad for trackage rights in order to provide a bypass. An example of difficult town running (for the town as well as the railroad) was at Morton, Illinois, just east of Peoria, where a heavy duty well maintained track with trolley catenary suddenly found itself running down the center of the town's brick paved main street.

Interurban Routes

• Danville-Ridge Farm (1901-1936)
• Danville-Catlin (1902-1939)
• Homer Branch (1904-1929)
• Danville-Champaign (1902-1953)
• Champaign-Decatur (1907-1955)
• Decatur-Springfield (1904-1955)
• Decatur-Bloomington (1905-1953)
• Bloomington-Peoria (1907-1953)
• Peoria-Springfield (1906-1956)
• Springfield-Granite City (1904-1956)
• Granite City-St. Louis (1910-1958)
• Staunton-Hillsboro (1905-1935)

Decline

With the Great Depression, the Illinois Traction System staggered. The ITS relinquished many of its city streetcar lines in the 1930s, and due to the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 it was forced to cut its ties with an affiliated firm that provided electrical utility services. The passenger railroad reorganized in 1937 as the Illinois Terminal Railroad (ITR) and continued to provide electric-powered interurban, long-distance multiple car passenger train service Peoria/Danville to St. Louis for almost another two decades. United States postal contracts helped provide revenue to make this service viable.

One of the Streamliners in the early 1950s In the 1950s, with the rise of the automobile, ITC's passenger service became hopelessly unprofitable. This was even after IT had purchased three expensive electric multiple car streamlined train sets ("Streamliners") from St. Louis Car Company. These were capable of decent speeds on ITC's well-maintained open country roadbed, but had to negotiate tight streetcar-style curves in the numerous towns along the line; moreover, they suffered an abnormal number of failures. Worst of all, this new equipment generally failed to attract passengers, even on the St. Louis-Peoria runs which had no railroad or direct highway competition, despite having parlor-observation and dining facilities. On March 3, 1956, ITC's interurban passenger service ended, followed by its last passenger service, the St. Louis-Granite City suburban cars, in 1958.

Because the ITR had some valuable trackage and lineside freight customers, it was acquired in June 1956 by nine Class I railroads. These collectively continued to operate ITR as a diesel-powered short line to carry freight to the acquiring railroads. The co-owned reorganized Illinois Terminal Railroad took down its trolley wire and abandoned much of its trackage, particularly the interurban street running in towns and villages. At various points ITC track was connected to trackage of adjacent lines and was available for optional routing. For the following 25 years (1956-1981) the ITC continued to operate diesel-powered trackage north and east of St. Louis, providing freight business for the railroads that owned it. The Norfolk and Western Railway purchased its partners' interests in the Illinois Terminal Railroad on September 1, 1981, and ITC officially merged into the N&W on May 8, 1982.

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