The Illinois and Midland Railroad is a

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

, serving Peoria, Springfield and Taylorville. Until 1996, when Genesee & Wyoming Inc. bought it, the company was named the Chicago and Illinois Midland Railway . It was once a

Class I railroad In the United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, st ...

, specializing in the hauling of

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

. At the end of 1970 it operated 121 route-miles on 214 miles of track; it reported 255 million ton-miles of revenue freight that year.

History

The history of the Chicago and Illinois Midland Railway traces to 1888 when the villagers of

Pawnee Pawnee initially refers to a Native American people and its language: * Pawnee people * Pawnee language Pawnee is also the name of several places in the United States: * Pawnee, Illinois * Pawnee, Kansas * Pawnee, Missouri * Pawnee City, Nebraska ...

built a rail line from their town to the

Illinois Central Railroad The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, was a railroad in the Central United States, with its primary routes connecting Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama. A line also c ...

mainline 15 miles south of Springfield. The railroad was named the Pawnee Railroad and was later extended eastward to Taylorville and a rail connection with what is today the Norfolk Southern Railway (ex-

Wabash Railroad The Wabash Railroad was a Class I railroad that operated in the mid-central United States. It served a large area, including track in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Missouri and the province of Ontario. Its primary co ...

). In 1905 the ''Chicago Edison Company'' (the predecessor of

Commonwealth Edison Company Commonwealth Edison, commonly known by syllabic abbreviation as ComEd, is the largest electric utility in Illinois, and the in Chicago and much of Northern Illinois. Its service territory stretches roughly from Iroquois County on the south to ...

, the Chicago electric utility, now part of

Exelon Exelon Corporation is an American Fortune 100 energy company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois and incorporated in Pennsylvania. It generates revenues of approximately $33.5 billion and employs approximately 33,400 people. Exelon is the largest ...

Corp) purchased the Pawnee Railroad for the purpose of transporting coal out of the central Illinois coal fields for Chicago Edison's coal-fired power plants in Chicago. Samuel Insull, the founder of Commonwealth Edison helped develop the coal fields along with Francis Peabody and his Illinois Midland Coal Company. Thus the railroad's name was changed from the Pawnee Railroad to the Chicago and Illinois Midland Railway Company, drawing its name not from its terminal points (the C&IM never went to Chicago), but from its corporate parents: Chicago Edison and Illinois Midland Coal Company. In the 1920s Insull bought some of the trackage of the bankrupt Chicago, Peoria and St. Louis Railroad (CP&StL), running from Springfield to

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

on the Illinois River and then running northeast from Havana to

East Peoria East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sunrise, Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from ...

. He connected his new acquisition with the existing C&IM by obtaining 15 miles of

trackage rights Railway companies can interact with and control others in many ways. These relationships can be complicated by bankruptcies. Operating Often, when a railroad first opens, it is only a short spur of a main line. The owner of the spur line may ...

over the Illinois Central from Springfield to the connection between the C&IM and the IC at a point known as CIMIC. Insull then built a rail-to-river coal transfer facility on the Illinois River at Havana, IL, where coal could be dumped from rail cars into barges for shipment up the Illinois River to Commonwealth Edison power plants on the river in the Chicago area. Insull, being a believer in "

vertical integration In microeconomics, management and international political economy, vertical integration is a term that describes the arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is integrated and owned by that company. Usually each member of the suppl ...

", thus was able to control the mining and shipment of coal, via his railroad, to his coal transfer plant, to his barges, to his power plants, where it was burned to create electricity for transmission on his lines to the customers in Chicago. USRA Light Mikado locomotive

When the Clean Air Act was passed in the 1960s the market for high sulfur central Illinois coal evaporated and the coal mines (at one time numbering 15) along the C&IM closed one by one. Commonwealth Edison put the C&IM on the market and offered to sell it for $1.00, but there were no takers. Then Commonwealth Edison changed its philosophy and began building power plants in central Illinois, adjacent to C&IM tracks, sending electricity to Chicago via high voltage lines. Soon the C&IM was back in action, but this time it was hauling coal into central Illinois from the

Powder River Basin The Powder River Basin is a geologic structural basin in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming, about east to west and north to south, known for its extensive coal reserves. The former hunting grounds of the Oglala Lakota, the area is very s ...

in Wyoming and Montana, instead of hauling coal out of the central Illinois coal fields. Soon unit coal trains, received in interchange from Burlington Northern and the Chicago and North Western were traversing C&IM tracks to Commonwealth Edison's power plant at Powerton ( Pekin) and to the still operating Havana Coal Transfer Plant. However, by the late 1980s Commonwealth Edison's philosophy changed again. In the wake of railroad deregulation in 1980, they began seeking competitive bids from railroads who could deliver western coal directly to Chicago. As a result, Commonwealth Edison sold the C&IM in December 1987 to a group of private investors. The ownership of the C&IM changed hands twice more before it was purchased by Genesee & Wyoming Inc. in 1996 and the name was changed to Illinois and Midland Railroad.

References

External links

Illinois and Midland Railroad official webpage - Genesee and Wyoming website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Illinois Midland Railroad Illinois railroads Railway companies established in 1996 Genesee & Wyoming Springfield, Illinois