Alton Junction
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Alton Junction
The Alton Junction, more commonly known as the 21st Street Crossing, is a historically significant rail location in Chicago, Illinois. The junction can be found just east of Canal Street and north of Cermak Road near Chicago's Chinatown. It is located just south of a massive vertical lift bridge that spans the South Branch of the Chicago River and "guards" the entrance to Chicago's Union Station. While a significant amount of rail traffic still traverses this interlock every day, it has been greatly reduced from using 26 diamonds to control over 150 trains using the crossing. The north-south line is the former Pennsylvania Railroad ( Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago) mainline, which is now owned and operated by Amtrak as the southern gateway to the Union Station complex. The Norfolk Southern's Chicago Line and the former BNSF Southern Transcon terminate at the southern entrance to the interlocking, but both NS and Burlington Northern Santa Fe trains have trackage rights over th ...
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Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_type2 = Counties , subdivision_name1 = Illinois , subdivision_name2 = Cook and DuPage , established_title = Settled , established_date = , established_title2 = Incorporated (city) , established_date2 = , founder = Jean Baptiste Point du Sable , government_type = Mayor–council , governing_body = Chicago City Council , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Lori Lightfoot ( D) , leader_title1 = City Clerk , leader_name1 = Anna Valencia ( D) , unit_pref = Imperial , area_footnotes = , ar ...
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Chicago Line (Norfolk Southern)
The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, established in 1833 and sometimes referred to as the Lake Shore, was a major part of the New York Central Railroad's Water Level Route from Buffalo, New York, to Chicago, Illinois, primarily along the south shore of Lake Erie (in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio) and across northern Indiana. The line's trackage remains a major rail transportation corridor used by Amtrak passenger trains and several freight lines; in 1998, its ownership was split at Cleveland between CSX to the east and Norfolk Southern in the west. History Early history: 1835–1869 ;Toledo to Chicago On April 22, 1833, the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad was chartered in the Territory of Michigan to run from the former Port Lawrence, Michigan (now Toledo, Ohio), near Lake Erie, northwest to Adrian on the River Raisin. The Toledo War soon gave about one-third of the route to the state of Ohio. Horse-drawn trains began operating on November 2, 1836; the horses were repl ...
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US&S
Union Switch & Signal (commonly referred to as US&S) was an American company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which focused on railway signaling equipment, systems and services. The company was acquired by Ansaldo STS (from 2015, Hitachi Rail STS) in 1988, operating as a wholly-owned company until January 2009, when US&S was renamed "Ansaldo STS USA" to operate as a subsidiary of Ansaldo in the Americas and Asia.Ansaldo STS USA
on Ansaldo website (archived, March 8, 2009)


History


Early years

founded Union Switch & Signal Inc. in 1881, consolidating the ...
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Central Station (Chicago Terminal)
Central Station was an intercity passenger terminal in downtown Chicago, Illinois, at the southern end of Grant Park near Roosevelt Road and Michigan Avenue. Owned by the Illinois Central Railroad, it also served other companies via trackage rights. It opened in 1893, replacing Great Central Station (on the site of the current Millennium Station), and closed in 1972 when Amtrak rerouted services to Union Station. The station building was demolished in 1974. It is now the site of a redevelopment called Central Station, Chicago. Adjoining platforms at Roosevelt served the Illinois Central's suburban trains for both the Electric and West lines, in addition to the South Shore Line interurban railroad. All three lines continued north to Randolph Street. History Illinois Central The Romanesque Revival structure, designed by Bradford L. Gilbert and built by the Illinois Central Railroad, opened April 17, 1893 to meet the traffic demands of the World's Columbian Exposition. ...
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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 connected Chicago with Sioux City, Iowa (1870). There was a significant branch to Omaha, Nebraska (1899), west of Fort Dodge, Iowa, and another branch reaching Sioux Falls, South Dakota (1877), starting from Cherokee, Iowa. The Sioux Falls branch has been abandoned in its entirety. The Canadian National Railway acquired control of the IC in 1998, and merged its operations in 1999. Illinois Central continues to exist as a paper railroad. History The IC was one of the oldest Class I railroads in the United States. The company was incorporated by the Illinois General Assembly on January 16, 1836. Within a few months Rep. Zadok Casey (D-Illinois) introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives authorizing a land grant to the compa ...
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Canadian National Railway
The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN is Canada's largest railway, in terms of both revenue and the physical size of its rail network, spanning Canada from the Atlantic coast in Nova Scotia to the Pacific coast in British Columbia across approximately of track. In the late 20th century, CN gained extensive capacity in the United States by taking over such railroads as the Illinois Central. CN is a public company with 22,600 employees, and it has a market cap of approximately CA$90 billion. CN was government-owned, having been a Canadian Crown corporation from its founding in 1919 until being privatized in 1995. , Bill Gates is the largest single shareholder of CN stock, owning a 14.2% interest through Cascade Investment and his own Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. F ...
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Michigan Services
''Michigan Services'' are three Amtrak passenger rail routes connecting Chicago, Illinois with the Michigan cities of Grand Rapids, Port Huron, and Detroit, and stations en route. The group is a component of the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative. The ''Michigan Services'' routes are: * (364/365): Chicago to Port Huron, Michigan * (370/371): Chicago to Grand Rapids, Michigan * (350/351/352/353/354/355): Chicago to Pontiac, Michigan The routes carried 780,549 passengers during fiscal year 2018. Up until fiscal year 2014, the State of Michigan only subsidized the operations of the ''Pere Marquette'' and ''Blue Water'' at a cost of $8 million in fiscal year 2014. Starting fiscal year 2014, the state took on the costs of operations for the ''Wolverine'' pushing the state subsidy to $25 million. No checked baggage service is available on Michigan Services routes. History When Amtrak was founded in 1971, five private companies provided inter-city passenger service in Michigan ...
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BNSF Railway
BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that provide rail connections between the western and eastern United States. BNSF trains traveled over in 2010, more than any other North American railroad. The BNSF Railway Company is the principal operating subsidiary of parent company Burlington Northern Santa Fe, LLC. Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, the railroad's parent company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., of Omaha, Nebraska. The current CEO is Kathryn Farmer. According to corporate press releases, the BNSF Railway is among the top transporters of intermodal freight in North America. It also hauls bulk cargo, including enough coal to generate around 25% of the electricity produced in the United States. The creation of BNSF started with the formation ...
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Southern Transcon
The Southern Transcon is a main line of BNSF Railway comprising 11 subdivisions between Southern California and Chicago, Illinois. Completed in its current alignment in 1908 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, when it opened the Belen Cutoff in New Mexico (going through eastern New Mexico, northwestern Texas, briefly part of western Oklahoma and to Kansas) and bypassed the steep grades of Raton Pass (which passes through northeastern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado), it now serves as a mostly double-tracked intermodal corridor. The Transcon is one of the most heavily trafficked rail corridors in the western United States: , an average of almost 90 trains daily (over 100 trains on peak days) passed over the section between Belen and Clovis, New Mexico, with each train typically long. History The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway completed a railroad between Chicago and Southern California in the 1880s. The route, built in stages, was less than ideal, esp ...
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Norfolk Southern Railway
The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31,250 km) in 22 eastern states, the District of Columbia, and has rights in Canada over the Albany to Montréal route of the Canadian Pacific Railway. NS is responsible for maintaining , with the remainder being operated under trackage rights from other parties responsible for maintenance. Intermodal containers and trailers are the most common commodity type carried by NS, which have grown as coal business has declined throughout the 21st century; coal was formerly the largest source of traffic. The railway offers the largest intermodal rail network in eastern North America. NS was also the pioneer of Roadrailer service. Norfolk Southern and its chief competitor, CSX Transportation, have a duopoly on the transcontinental freight rail l ...
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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 Rockford, as well Springfield, its capital. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area. Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Additionally, the Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabas ...
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Amtrak
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada. ''Amtrak'' is a portmanteau of the words ''America'' and ''trak'', the latter itself a sensational spelling of ''track''. Founded in 1971 as a quasi-public corporation to operate many U.S. passenger rail routes, Amtrak receives a combination of state and federal subsidies but is managed as a for-profit organization. The United States federal government, through the Secretary of Transportation, owns all the company's issued and outstanding preferred stock. Amtrak's headquarters is located one block west of Union Station in Washington, D.C. Amtrak serves more than 500 destinations in 46 states and three Canadian provinces, operating more than 300 trains daily over of track. Amtrak owns approximately of this track and operates an ...
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