I am looking for a map of the Rockford Beloit & Janesville Railway Co. this was an interurban system that operated between 1902 and 1930. I need a map that shows the exact route the line took in the Janesville-Beloit area. The line was also called the ROCKFORD & INTERURBAN RAILWAY CO.
Any help on this will be much appreciated.
Later Bill
I have the 1921 Oficial Railroad Map of Wisconsin produced by the Wisconsin Railroad Commission and it shows the route of the line as the Rockford & Interurban. The map scale is 1" = 10 miles so the scale is small and the interurban routes are very fine lines.
The map does have one mile grid lines, but at 1/10 of an inch squared equaling a square mile, it is not going to give you the detail to put you right on the spot.
If you think it might be of some help send me an e-mail with your USPS address and I'll make you a copy of the section of the map showing the R&I.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
Part of the route south of Janesville is visible crossing route 11 between I-90 and the Southern Wisconsin Airport. It is marked by electric poles and from the air can be viewed coming from the south and then aligning with the large railroad yard of what was I believe the Chicago and Northwestern. A substation used to stand on a road south of and parallel to Route 11 but I've never been able to find it. Several maps of the route exist in various publications but it's nearly impossible to figure where anything was in relation to what's there today. The interurban played a major role in transportation and communication in the area before highways and buses and automobiles, particularly because the electric trains stopped at all the small towns and many country locations along the way and came right into downtown areas in cities. The interurban cars were beautiful outside and quite plush inside; they weren't just big trolley cars. In many areas the interurban routes remain today as bike and hiking paths, beautifully maintained and walkable. Alas, the Rockford, Beloit and Janesville expired long before that movement hit its stride and is nearly impossible to discern anymore.
Bill,
CERA Bulletin 111 (1969) "Badger Traction" has maps of the affiliated Janesville Traction and Beloit Traction portions of the system, along with a 23-page description of construction, operations and finances.
John Timm
Give a call to your local library and see if they have older Plat books for the 1900-1930 time frame. Although I know that you are a bit southwest of this line <G> you may be able to find something for Winnebago County. I know that the Rockford Public Library has a great local history room on the third floor that has these books for most of the counties in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.
The Rockford local history room also has copies of some of these older interurban history books. I don't know if they have that one that deals with Wisconsin, but they do have some stuff for the line as it went north out of Rockford up toward the stateline at Beloit, WI.
Another resource are the Sanborn Fire maps. These were fairly well detailed and showed almost every building and side track for a specific area, but these are large and bulky and you probably will have to go to a local history society or library to find one--and then probably only for that county. The Rockford library has one for Winnebago County circa 1930 showing all the old factories and facilities.
Contact me off list Bill, I may have a copy of the Winnebago County portion that you can take a look at.
Lance
National Archives will have nada (ICC Index and the Rice Index do not show the line, didn't qualify for ICC Valuation and isn't in the electric railway dockets)...Talked to your State Archives to see what old RR Commission Records they have?
That line was hard to trace , much of it was side of the road and only in a few spots was it on PROW. I remember the Substation that was torn down for no good reason , I recall the spelling was unusual, the letter "S" ( Substation was spelled out in cast concrete on the building) was reversed to look like runes. I remember the land owners as being difficult if you stepped off the road to snap a picture. The CERA bullitin 106 was mentioned before, I used these books to find many interurban lines in Wisconsin along with a Delorne topo map.
I lived in Janesville in the early 90s before moving to Fond Du Lac.
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