Hi,

A recent article by The Pantagraph (Bloomington newspaper) was on the upcoming abandonment of Norfolk Southern's former NYC line between south Bloomington and Mansfield. The line was originally built by the CCC&StL (Big Four) in the mid-1860's between Indiana and points west. Since then it has seen multiple ownership changes, and the Mansfield-Bloomington portion was last used by NS right after they bought Conrail. Around this time, the aging bridges along the route began to pose a safety hazard, and, since by this time the portion of the line between Mansfield and Bloomington was lightly used, NS closed this portion in 2004.

The sections west of Bloomington and east of Champaign-Urbana were removed long ago, and the only chunk of the line that still sees occasional use is between Mansfield and Urbana. At this time, NS could reopen the line between Mansfield and Bloomington because the tracks are still in place; they just need a lot of work since they've been untouched for over a decade. I have an unpublished and uncompleted article about this line somewhere that I started work on a couple years ago, and probably will never finish.

However, NS thinks otherwise, and they are currently filing for abandonment of this section. The abandonment process is expected to be completed by the end of the year, and the communities along the route are already talking about converting at least the Bloomington-Farmer City section to a trail. I'm not against the trail idea, but if they were to convert the ROW, I have a few concerns:

-The derelict grain elevator at the ghost town of Empire, near Downs
-The many bridges along the route that date back to the Big Four days
-A few signals still standing
-All of the railroad crossing signs (also dating back many years, I even think there's a wig-wag signal somewhere)

I'm sure there's even more relics spanned across the proposed trail route. Let's hope that if the plan succeeds, we can keep a majority of them standing. But just in case, get your shots while you can!

Also, here's the article: http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/bl ... a9690.html

Thomas Dyrek

That is a section of the former Peoria and Eastern running SE of the connection with the Nickel Plate at Dean, where both lines once crossed the long-gone former IC Charter LIne, NS bought it in the early nineties as a possible cutoff but has never used it, and so it has been out of service for around 25 years. Prior to 1990 or so a daily Conrail turn from Indy to Peoria used the route, after around 1986 it operated on the former Nickel Plate between Bloomington and Peoria due to a washout near Mackinaw. I was an undergrad at ISU in the late eighties and saw this train about every weekday.

This abandonment can plausibly be seen as a victim of the HHH-Hackman attempted coup at NS. NS had been very good about holding on to out of service track in case they might need it, but one of the things this duo promised to the NS BOD was to sell unused lines to raise money, and even though they didn't pull off the takeover NS management has been forced to unload track that they wanted to keep. I wonder what else is being unloaded, for example, they had held on to the Egyptian Line running along the Illinois-Indiana border, south of the Streator line connection to near Danville, even though it also hasn't been used since the Conrail takeover, supposedly as a backup in case CN trackage rights from Chicago to Gibson City become troublesome.

I see that line whenever I visit Monticello (coming through Farmer City off I-74). It's rough. Trees growing up through the middle of it rough. If it has seen traffic in the last 20 years I'd be surprised.

Always wondered what the story was with that line. The fact that it's owned by a Class I surprises me, as I'd expect it to see a weedspray truck every year or two.

Dean was one of our favorite railfan hangouts when we were growing up in Bloomington-Normal in the 1960's. The operators were all friendly to a bunch of teenagers, and if you timed things right there was often activity on the Charter line, as well as both NKP and P&E lines. We had the phone number for the tower, and they knew us so that we could call and find out what was coming up. All three roads kept a switcher in town, a geep for the IC (shockers), an SW unit for the P&E and a 44 tonner (the 90) for the NKP, and they were often seen at Dean, where the IC interchange was. The railroad net in BN was like a big triangle. Normal (where the IC and GM&O crossed), Dean on the South, and Bloomington depot on the west, where GM&O and the P&E-NKP crossed and interchanged. There was always plenty to see as a result.

I've decided to work on my article about this line again. Do you know the name of the Dean tower operator(s)?

TD

After 50 years? Mr. Dunakey was one of the operators, but I cannot remember the others.

One of them lived around 200 feet north of where Dean Tower had stood in 1985, after he had retired and long after it had been demolished. I ran into him the first time I visited there, his house bordered the corner of the old Amboy District (which was out of service but not pulled yet) and the old NKP line, by then NS. He was doing a bit of landscaping , flowers etc, on the edge of his property about ten feet from the NS. I remember he told me he had recently put an ad in the Bloomington paper for a day to sell his old railroad memorabilia and that no one had showed up, which made me sad. He also told me about digging through the shed where they stored bundles of train orders from every day at the tower to find a train order from the day President Kennedy was shot, that said everyone was to stand still for one minute at a certain time etc.

I photographed Illinois Central 2-8-0 908 at Dean Tower in July 1957. I didn't spend a lot of time at Dean, since it was at the opposite end of the city from where we lived. But I got there a few times.

Richard -

Great photo of a neat IC Consolidation and tower location. One of those things long gone that only exist due to photographers like yourself.


Les

Hi,

Going back to the line itself--here's what the ROW looked like just south of where the tower stood as of this morning:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/148791086 ... 563902@N25

The rails appear to be in relatively good shape at least near the crossings. At each crossing I visited, one of the two crossbucks have been removed, and the "Tracks out of Service" signs are gone too. There's about a 30-foot trestle bridge nearby over a creek in almost pristine condition despite a few weeds. From what I could see today, it wouldn't take much to get trains running on this line again.

Thomas Dyrek

Great shot of the 908, Richard. 902, 907 and 908 were the last active IC 2-8-0's and were assigned to the Bloomer Line between Normal Jct and Kankakee. I remember seeing one of them in 1957 when visiting friends who lived off Jersey Avenue, when it was WAAY out in the country. After all these years, I don't remember anything except that it was a steam engine, and the only ones that I was used to seeing at that time were on the IC Charter line between Normal and Freeport or the NKP between Normal and Peoria, so I was not expecting it.

By the time we moved to Bloomington in 1954 the NKP was all diesel; there was still steam on the IC Charter Line (2-8-2s, and once I saw a 2-10-2), but after a year or so the only steam left through Bloomington were the 2-8-0s on the Kankakee (Bloomer) line. I remember 902, 906 and 908 and photographed all three. Here's 902 on the turntable in Bloomington.

We are a little off-topic here (the old P&E line between Bloomington and Mansfield) -- I hope folks don't mind.