The Illinois and Midland Railroad is a

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

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 so ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

, 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 Railroad classes are the system by which Rail freight transport, freight railroads are designated in the United States. Railroads are assigned to Class I, II or III according to annual revenue criteria originally set by the Surface Transportatio ...

, 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 Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

. 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. As of 2024, it has of track.

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, is a railroad in the Central United States. Its primary routes connected Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, and thus, ...

mainline 15 miles south of Springfield, at a junction point that would come to be known as "Cimic", an acronym for Chicago & Illinois Midland-Illinois Central, and is still listed as such on maps today. 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 The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The comp ...

(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 con ...

). 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 primary electric provider in Chicago and much of Northern Illinois. Its service territory stretches roughly from Iroquoi ...

, the Chicago electric utility, now part of

Exelon Exelon Corporation is an American public utility headquartered in Chicago, and incorporated in Pennsylvania. Exelon is the largest electric parent company in the United States by revenue and is the largest regulated electric utility in the Uni ...

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 Samuel Insull (November 11, 1859 – July 16, 1938) was a British American business magnate. He was an innovator and investor based in Chicago who helped create an integrated electrical infrastructure in the United States. Insull created hold ...

, 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 (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.Illinois River The Illinois River () is a principal tributary of the Mississippi River at approximately in length. Located in the U.S. state of Illinois, the river has a drainage basin of . The Illinois River begins with the confluence of the Des Plaines ...

and then running northeast from Havana to

East Peoria East Peoria is a city in Tazewell County, Illinois, United States. The population was 22,484 at the 2020 census. East Peoria is part of the Peoria metropolitan area, located across the Illinois River from downtown Peoria. It is home to many Cate ...

. 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 c ...

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, also referred to as vertical consolidation, is an arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is integrated and owned by that company. Usually each ...

", 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 ...

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. In 2023,

Genesee & Wyoming Genesee & Wyoming Inc. (G&W) is an American short line railroad holding company, that owns or maintains an interest in 122 railroads in the United States, Canada, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom; and formerly in Australia. ...

holds 154 miles, and IMRR has four interchanges:

Springfield, Illinois Springfield is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Illinois. Its population was 114,394 at the 2020 United States census, which makes it the state's List of cities in Illinois, seventh-most populous cit ...

;

Canadian National The Canadian National Railway Company () 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 an ...

CPKC Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited, doing business as CPKC (known as Canadian Pacific Railway Limited until 2023), is a Canadian railway holding company. Through its primary operating railroad subsidiaries, Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) and ...

Norfolk Southern The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The comp ...

, and

Union Pacific The Union Pacific Railroad is a Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United States after BNSF, ...

(who also has an interchange in

Pekin, Illinois Pekin ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Tazewell County in the U.S. state of Illinois. Located on the Illinois River, Pekin is the largest city of Tazewell County and the second most populous municipality of the Peoria metropolitan area ...

("Crescent").

BNSF BNSF Railway is the largest freight railroad in the United States. One of six North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 36,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and over 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that provide ...

also has an interchange in

(also at "Crescent"), and the Tazewell & Peoria Railroad has one in

Creve Coeur, Illinois Creve Coeur is a village in Groveland Township, Tazewell County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2020 census, the village population was 4,934. Creve Coeur is a suburb of Peoria and is part of the Peoria, Illinois Metropolitan Statistica ...

. The I&M can handle freight cars which hold up to 286,000 pounds of cargo.

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