And that is in the summer, in the winter it is a cross between a nuclear apocalypse and Antarctica. (I am an Illinois native so I feel I can make fun of it).

Actually, there is no ROW immediately past the present west end of museum track... never was. As a typical Midwest interurban, the Elgin & Belvidere went through the towns on it's route on franchise rights that allowed laying track in the public street. The present end of track is right at the beginning of the curve that put the track in the middle of Jefferson St. Forty years ago one could still feel the corrugations in the road surface caused by the ties rotting away beneath the pavement, but the street has been resurfaced several times in the intervening years.The combined depot / electrical substation stood where the town water tank now stands. The track continued in the street through town to just past the church at the west end of town, and one used to be able to see the overgrown ROW as it swung in a lazy S to the north of Jefferson St. to get back next to the C&NW again. There was a new warehouse built on the ROW a couple years ago just about where it came up against railroad.

Alas, the franchise is long gone, and it is doubtful that any insurance carrier would look kindly on running the museum's cars on a real street with real traffic, so that end point is pretty final.

That's exactly correct. Granted, the mindset changes with the wind every few years since it's a revolving door of management.

"Let's treat it like a tourist railroad." "Let's get rid of our common carrier status and operate more like a museum." "Nah, let's keep our common carrier status since we MIGHT get a freight customer again some decade." "Well gee, in that case we might as well be a tourist railroad."

Does anyone by chance know if the unit trains stored at IRM went back into service or just to be stored someplace else since IRM needs its tracks cleared? With the coal business down I'm curious. Does more coal get shipped in winter or summer?

Don't know where the unit train cars went. As to coal shipping, in the Midwest coal shipping is driven by electric consumption, which goes up during the summer. We heat with gas (either natural gas or LP) but run our air conditioning with electricity.

The first two went to Eagle Butte Mine. The last one took the same route to BNSF at Northport, NE, but I didn't hear that it went to the same place.