The Eastern Illinois Railroad (EIRC) was a Class III, 53-mile
shortline railroad
:''Short Line is also one of the four railroads in the American version of the popular board game Monopoly, named after the Shore Fast Line, an interurban streetcar line.''
A shortline railroad is a small or mid-sized railroad company that opera ...
that ran from
Neoga, Illinois, to
Metcalf, Illinois,
with headquarters in
Charleston, Illinois
Charleston is a city in, and the county seat of, Coles County, Illinois, United States. The population was 17,286, as of the 2020 census. The city is home to Eastern Illinois University and has close ties with its neighbor, Mattoon. Both are p ...
. The railroad hauled grain and lumber. There were 4 locomotives in operation on the EIRC when operations ceased, two they owned and two that were leased. They were an EMD GP9 and GP10, along with their prized pair of GP38-2 locomotives leased from ILSX and Wells Fargo. The president of EIRC was Everett Fletcher.
In 2019,
Watco's Decatur & Eastern Illinois Railroad filed in intent to acquire EIRC.
According to the Senior Counsel for
ADM (company)
The Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, commonly known as ADM, is an American multinational food processing and commodities trading corporation founded in 1902 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The company operates more than 270 plants and 42 ...
, a majority shareholder of NRG Inc. (which owned EIRC), EIRC ceased rail switching and terminal operations December 31, 2019, and ceased being a covered employer under the Railroad Retirement and Railroad Unemployment Insurance Acts on March 1, 2020.
References
External links
Unofficial website
{{Illinois railroads
Defunct Illinois railroads