The Railroad (ICRR) in Bluford, IL

SOME ILLINOIS CENTRAL HISTORY:


The Illinois Central Railroad (ICRR) was chartered in 1851 to build a
railroad from Cairo, Illinois, at the ajoining of the Ohio and
Mississippi rivers, to Galena, in the extreme northwest corner of of
the state (the "Old Main"),  with a branch from Centrailia (named
for the railroad) to Chicago (the "Chicago Branch").

In 1900 a train wreck at Vaughn, Miss., achieved worldwide fame because
an engine-wiper named Wallace Sanders wrote a song about the incident.
The engineer, the only person killed, was one John Luther  Jones,
nicknamed "Casey".

In 1928 the railroad constructed a cutoff line between Edgewood, IL and
Fulton, KY to bypass congestion at Cairo, the waist of its system. The
Bluford Switching Yard, at Bluford, IL, was the hub of the Edgewood
cut-off line and activities. The Bluford Yard was active for over 40
years, closing in 1969.
	  
The other railroad in Bluford was the Southern RR and it was there long
before the ICRR. They say it was originally the "Air Lines" RR, then
later was the Southern. It went east/west and had a depot right in the
heart of downtown Bluford.
	  
Notable ICRR "name" passenger trains:
      

        
Panama Limited (Chicago - New Orleans)
        
City of New Orleans (Chicago - New Orleans)
        
Green Diamond (Chicago - St. Louis)
        
City of Miami (Chicago - Miami)
      

THE ICRR IN BLUFORD

The IC was in Bluford as long as I can remember. The "Edgewood Cut-off" was 
constructed in 1928. The Bluford Switching Yard was the hub of the Cut-off. 
It was a freight-switching yard, and there was never any passenger train traffic
thru Bluford, except an occassional troop train in WWII, and maybe a
few times when there was an accident over on the Mainline. The line
that came through Bluford was called the Edgewood Cut-off, because it
started iat Edgewood, IL about 15 miles south of Effingham, and went on
to Fulton KY. For reference, Effingham was 199 and Edgewood was 214.
Those numbers are miles from Chicago, going south. Then Edgewood was
also mile 0 at the start of the cut-off and Bluford was 42, on the
cut-off. Fulton was 127 miles from Bluford, which was the south end of
the cut-off. There was also a branch from Bluford that went to Paducah.
The ICRR Mainline went on from Edgewood to Centralia, thru Carbondale,
thru Cairo, and on down to Fulton. Centralia and Cairo (Mounds) had
their own switching yards and the Bluford yard took some of their
business after it was constructed and activated. Although freight
trains still go thru Bluford, on the Edgewood Cut-off, switching ceased
in the late 60's and the excitement and glamour of the old Bluford
Yards, now exists only in our aging memories.


	  
SWITCHING YARDS


Now why was there a need for switchings yards in the first place? Well
back in the '30's and on thru the '50's, most of the country's freight
was carried by rail. Remember there were no Interstate Highways or
18-wheelers back then. Freight came from various sources, such as
manufacturing plants' shipping docks. About every plant that produced
or assembled products for sale, had "rail spurs", coming into their
area from one or more railroads. Coal mines loaded coal cars or
"hopper" cars with coal. Oil companies shipped tank cars of oil.
Manufacturing companies shipped their products via rail. New autos from
Detroit were shipped in "auto cars" or "auto rack cars". Bananas were
unloaded from big boats on the Gulf Coast. They  could fill
numerous, maybe 50 or more, refrigerator (reefer) cars with bananas.
There were also flat cars and the ubiquitous boxcars. Empty cars 
would be placed on the spurs by the loading  docks of companies.
When filled with a product, loaded cars were taken from the spurs and
eventually ended up on the train, headed toward their destination. As
you would expect, the cars picked up might be going to practically any
place in the country. The shippers were the companies that were
shipping something and the carriers were the railroads that would be
"carrying" the freight, or moving it by train. Thus when cars were
"picked up", they would have various destinations and routes by rail to
travel, to get to those destinations. After these cars were picked up
by the carriers, or railroads, they would end up on a train, on the
first leg of their journey to their destination. 
	  
THE BLUFORD SWITCHING YARD LAYOUT:

The Bluford ICRR switching yard had 15 switching tracks, plus 2 Ice
House tracks, a "thoroughfare" track, the main line track, 4 Rip
(repair) tracks, 4 "A yard" tracks, which were south of the main yard
tracks and used to overflow times of heavy rail traffic,some
"roundhouse tracks", and probably a few more that I don't recall, but
those are the main ones. It could handle an amazing amount of rail
traffic and was often stretched to the limit during WWII and sometimes
after that. The longest switching track was #1 and they got
progressivly shorter going on to #15. I think #1 could handle about 150
cars -- if those cars were hopper cars. Hoppers are shorter than
others. Track #8 could handle about 100. Since tracks were used for
switching and train building purposes at both the north end and south
end of the yards, it was necessary to coordinate and keep in touch with
what each end was doing to prevent running into each other while
conducting their seperate switching operations. The ice house tracks
were used for trains, often "hot-shot" freights that would usually
have  perishable goods needing ice and often for banana trains in
the summer, when it was reasonably sure that they would need icing.
	  
The viaduct over the ICRR has been in it's present location for a long
time now, on the road that goes right by Doc Goodrich's home. Before it
was built, there was a viaduct on the road that comes from the west and
goes right in front of DeWitt's store location. That road just went on
east then, to the viaduct over the tracks. It seemed like a long ways
to go around after they built the new one and took the old one out.
Earl Thomason said that it was done so that they could get rid of the
"hill" on the west side of the old viaduct, so that the switch engine
engineer could see the switchman's signals. When it was there, they had
to have an extra switchman down there by it, just to pass on the
lantern or hand signals from the engine foreman to the engineer. I had
always thought they had expanded the yards a little bit in that area
and needed to move it because of that , but Earl told me that signal
visibility was the reason.