Paducah Rare-Mileage Trip
May 20-23, 2011

Photos by Dave Ingles

Sunday morning, the PAL units pulled us from our parking spot into the yard, where the Amtrak units coupled on.

The Ultimate Job-Briefing: a 15-minute meeting involving PAL, BNSF, Amtrak, and maybe other railroaders, who knows!

We backed out east past the old Union Station site onto the line to Louisville, past the wye, then pulled ahead around the wye onto the Paducah & Illinois.. This view is backing up, our first move from the yard, about 9 a.m., our having left our parking spot a mile away a full hour earlier!

Platforms of the old Union Station.

Again we pass over the middle of the yard. The white building in the distance, center of photo and left of the yard tracks, is the diesel shop, in whose area the Amtrak diesels spent the weekend.

Looking upriver on the Ohio toward the I-24 bridge, which is east of Metropolis a mile or 2 on the Illinois side.

Metropolis casino is just out of the photo to the right.

At Metropolis Jct., at 931 am, looking north on CN/IC's Edgewood Cutoff, the Bluford Sub, I believe (named for the RR hamlet mid-route that was the division point).

Cypress siding to the UP is "Vienna Jct." to the BNSF, or vice versa. Anyway, it's the end of the UP-owned jointly used stretch from Neilson south; C&EI's old line to Joppa and Thebes, now all taken up, diverged just behind me in this view looking back south.

Looking north along Cypress Siding toward the old West Vienna C&EI station stop, site of Vienna Jct. tower. We have left BNSF ownership at 1021 for 27 minutes of running on jointly used, UP-owned track.

Throwing the switch at Neilson Jct., to leave the UP (old C&EI) onto the BNSF (old CB&Q).

C&EI to the right, Burlington to the left, "new mileage" begins. We had come south on the line at the right. The Neilson tower, which I saw in 1972, stood just behind this UP sign.

Locking the switch; note the UP Track Warrant Control sign.

North of Neilson Jct., somewhere near Christopher, Ill., the properly attired photographer (right) and Reg Mitchell of the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC enjoy the southern Illinois air  on Caritas' rear platform in a photo by Justin Sobeck, a fan who was riding as a rep of Mid-America Railcar Leasing, for sleeper Pacific Union and sleeper-lounge Swift Stream.

Justin Sobeck and Clark Johnson on the Caritas. Justin is from Christopher, Ill., and his family and friends were out to see the train's passage.

Justin forwarded this photo taken by family friend Dennis Toth as we passed through Christopher.

Photo by Dennis Toth

Crossing the CN-IC main line in Centralia. After much research and the help of some NS veterans from the Southern Railway, we determined that SOU and predecessors never had their own track thru town, instead using a mile or so of CB&Q (and predecessors and successors) track. The switch at the left is where the NS from Louisville (at left) goes onto the BNSF (our ex-BN line from Paducah).

To BNSF, it's still "IC Xing."

When my wife, just out of college, was a cub reporter for the Centralia Sentinel, this factory was the Hollywood Brands candy factory, whose big product was Pay Day candy bars; the facility still produces candy.

Amtrak now uses a small modern brick building. The former IC Centralia depot was situated to its left, even farther from the tracks. This photo looks southeast.

This shows the north switch, where NS leaves the BNSF track; the CN-IC main is in the distance.

Curving into the former CB&Q yard, whose roundhouse -- to the right of the light tower, in between the CB&Q and IC tracks -- was one of the last homes of daily active steam on CB&Q, 2-10-4's and 2-8-2's ca. 1957.

NS track at left of the BNSF yard office.

Distant signal for NS for entering BNSF heading east.

Local engine 2039 at left, southbound Powder River Basin coal train at right.

Local still has a pure-BN waycar.

Carlyle Lake, manmade by damming up the Kaskaskia River; BNSF goes across it on a causeway.

Whitecaps on Carlyle Lake.

Crossing CSX, the old PRR "Vandalia" main line to St. Louis, at Smithboro. I missed the previous crossing to the south, Shattuc, of CSX's ex-B&O Cincinnati-St. Louis line, where the boarded up tower still stands!

Sorento is now just a switch, for coal trains to turn east on the old Nickel Plate St. Louis line to reach the power plant at Coffeen. The Toledo to St. Louis  line was originally 3-foot-gauge and nicknamed the "Clover Leaf"; NKP 2-8-4 759 took the Golden Spike Centennial Ltd. from St. Louis to Lima in 1969 over this route, with the photographer and his fiance aboard -- for $60, the daily fare regardless of distance. I consider it the all-time bargain for the most super-rare miles I ever rode!

Toland is BN's name for the wye connection to the old Big Four St. Louis main line. We look south here. Also known as Walsh, the location is where the Big Four (later NYC, PR, CR, and now Union Pacific) passes under the BN line. BN quit trackage rights over B&O from Shattuc to E. St. Louis in favor of rights on the PC (or Conrail, I forget when Toland connection was built). This is Milepost 74 from Concord, and we had to wait as a St. Louis-bound BNSF general freight finished moving from southward on our track to westward on UP. UP gained ownership when CR abandoned the route east of Pana, Ill.; C&EI had historic rights on it west of Pana to reach St. Louis, so it became a critical link for C&EI successors MoPac and then UP for a Chicago-St. Louis route. This was all before UP bought SP, of course, which by then had most of the ex-GM&O Chicago-St. Louis line.

Two views of the freight we were waiting for.

This looks north as we begin to proceed at Toland. Look carefully on this east side of the BN line and you can see the UP mainline track ahead and below.

Looking back at the overhead over the UP and the north wye switch.

At Litchfield, a remnant of the original Big Four route to St. Louis, from Hillsboro through here to Alton, is still in use for local customers, connected to BNSF but switched by contract firm Respondek. This view looks west along the NYC right of way toward old Route 66 and Interstate 55.

The NS (ex-Wabash) depot still stands a block to the east here on Route 16, but the BN depot is long gone.

At Girard, the BNSF curves into town, crosses UP's former GM&O line (the Amtrak route) and parallels it north for a few miles.

At Lowder, we could see a squall line moving east ahead of us, and soon BNSF issued a high-wind warning, so we paused 10 minutes at Lowder passing siding until the storm was out of the immediate area.

Looking back at the KCS overpass northwest of Franklin. This is the old GM&O "Air Line" from Springfield to Roodhouse, covered by a High Iron Travel weekend outing a couple of summers ago from St. Louis to Roodhouse on KCS, I&M (old C&IM), TZPR (old Peoria & Pekin Union), and TP&W (on BN rights) to Galesburg.

Approaching Jacksonville, I-72 bridge ahead. I went to college in Jacksonville 1962-1965 and so was working Dutch doors on both sides!

In Jacksonville, we look back south at the KCS connection track. This is the south end of the old GM&O "Jack Line," to Murrayville on the Air Line; this is the only Jack Line portion south of Bloomington's industrial spur that still exists. At lower right here in the blank land was the GM&O Jacksonville freight house. At one time a tower guarded the GM&O-CB&Q diamond, on the opposite (east) side of our train here.

Half-visible in the trees is Lanzeretti's Italian restaurant, in the old Alton/GM&O brick depot, which saw the last motor cars on the Bloomington-KC run in 1960. It also served CB&Q's motor cars, I believe. The GM&O track was to the right of the building, where a later structure is now. It's 4 pm sharp.

Friend Dick Wallin of Springfield drove west 35 miles to photograph our train, enduring hail from the squall line we halted for as he traveled I-72. He still shoots slides, and they have the old GM&O depot in his scene here. Our engines are approaching the NS (ex-Wabash) diamond; the tower was razed in the early 1990's.

BNSF's Beardstown Yard, south of the community, held a few coal trains and several engines. These B-B GE's are probably for local freights; Galesburg is a GE maintenance base.

Two SD60M's on a coal drag.

Another pure-BN waycar.

DPU on a southbound coal train.

General yard scene. We stopped to change pilots and pick up a passenger.

Clark Johnson is in the Dutch door. The passenger we picked up is Van McCullough, a retired clergyman who as a young man working for the Wabash was a fireman on the 2-6-0 Moguls on the Keokuk branch out of Bluffs, Ill. He lives in Jacksonville now.

The CB&Q roundhouse in Beardstown still stands.

The passenger station also stands, much modified, now in M/W use.

Approaching the Beardstown Illinois River moveable bridge.

Rear DPU on southbound coal train we waited for at Grimes siding for 42 minutes. We departed at 1746 hours.

Near Stewart siding between Beardstown and Vermont, Ill., we curve across a trestle at Milepost 128 (from Chicago, via Galesburg and Bushnell). On a 1961 CB&Q 2-8-2 4960 fantrip weekend out of Davenport sponsored by Iowa Chapter NRHS, we had a photo runby here.

Along Stewart Siding a few minutes later (it's just after 6 p.m.), is a high country-road overpass, which on the 1961 steam trip was the site of another photo runby, although the passing siding did not exist then. These spots are a couple of miles south of the US 24 overpass of this line.

Looking back at Vermont, where the branch to Lewistown (and formerly Canton and Yates City) splits off. Time is 1818 hours.

Bottom Photo by John Bybee

We pulled into the Galesburg Amtrak station at 1925 hours and walked across the street to the Packing House for an excellent dinner.

The storm clouds of another squall line you see in the distance in the photo above materialized into sideways rain as we sat in the dining room; we just made it in by about 10 minutes. The heavyweight car you see is part of the display with a CB&Q Hudson and other equipment, east of the depot. After dinner we walked back over to the train, the rain long gone. The train was parked for the night on the business track spur just west of the depot. Tomorrow, it'll be on to Chicago, via Savanna.

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