Well part of that is, 1) If that's the only place you go, then you tell everyone it's the only place to go! I think the Green Bay & Western and the Columbus & Greenveille also used the same avertisement. 2) Anywhere was (is) a quicker interchange than Chicago...well, seems like it sometimes.
There sure was some attraction, though. Besides the Minneapolis & Saint Louis, some other lines that pop into my mind while I'm too lazy to grab an OGR from across the room are: the IC, WAB, NKP, NYC, PRR and B&O (the last three via comparatively long branches IIRC) and, oh yes, the RI. I'm only speculating here but my guess is that it was a big enough city and the territory was easy enough to build through at minimal cost (no great mountains or rivers, just kinda flat midwestern cornfields) that everyone in the neighborhood just "joined the party" to get a share of the traffic. Once the were there, interchange was an additional possibility.
I'm only speculating here but my guess is that it was a big enough city and the territory was easy enough to build through at minimal cost (no great mountains or rivers, just kinda flat midwestern cornfields)
Peoria has a population of about 125,000 the fifth largest city in Ill., in 1974 it was third, back in the thirties it was in the second spot, so you can see it hasn't grown that much.
It's located along the Illinois River Which had 3 Railroad bridges(P&PU,TPW,and Illinois Terminal) , and one 10 miles south at Pekin (UP) and one in Chillicothe (BNSF) now only 1 bridge(P&PU now T&P) in Peoria, ones in Pekin and Chillicothe are still there.
There's no great mountains here but the railroads are in the Ill. River valley, the steepest grade on the MStL( which somtimes need helpers) was coming out of the Kickapoo Creek valley in Peoria, also during steam era CNW sometimes need helpers coming out of the same valley.
Here's a link to Yahoo group Peoria Rails.
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/PeoriaRails/?yguid=195649990
Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
tiskilwa wrote:The attached advertisement for the Peoria & Pekin Union (dated 1974) makes the claim that Peoria, Illinois was an advantageous place to interchange between railroads (ICG, C&NW, BN, Santa Fe, etc) because of low congestion and short delays.Question: Has Peoria ever become an important "gateway"? Is there, and has there ever been, much interchange taking place there?
Oh, how I miss the days of regulated railroads (not). It was only 26 years ago!
Under regulation, Peoria was a viable gateway and quite important, particularly for transcontinental traffic such as lumber where brokers were seeking to delay or accelerate shipments to optimize market timing on delivery. In terms of total carloads interchanged it was no Chicago or St. Louis, but it wasn't insignificant, either. Back then, you paid by rate territories, and convoluted routings and all the costs associated with extra handling were simply absorbed in the system. Post-regulation, shippers now had to pay for any extra handling, reroutes, and diversions, and Peoria's value as an interchange point went to nil very quickly.
S. Hadid
What are you quoting from here, Wally? Sounds good!
Commenting on some earlier responses: PRR, NKP, Wabash, and B&O didn't get to Peoria. NYC did, though, via its Peoria & Eastern subsidiary. And Santa Fe got there, too, via a branch to Pekin from its main line (now gone).
The hill out of the valley used to be an obstacle for CNW, too--I heard plenty of tales about Pioneer Hill.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
Pennsylvania RR through its subsidiary Terre Haute and Peoria reached Farmdale Jct. and had trackage rights into Peoria over the Nickel Plate.
Nickel Plate got into Peoria over the former Lake Erie & Western. Nickel Plate merged this road during the Van Sweringen era.
Santa Fe did not reach Peoria until it merged the TP&W in 1984. The Santa Fe Pekin Branch did not go to Peoria.
CShaveRR wrote: What are you quoting from here, Wally? Sounds good! Commenting on some earlier responses: PRR, NKP, Wabash, and B&O didn't get to Peoria. NYC did, though, via its Peoria & Eastern subsidiary. And Santa Fe got there, too, via a branch to Pekin from its main line (now gone). The hill out of the valley used to be an obstacle for CNW, too--I heard plenty of tales about Pioneer Hill.
With most of the old railroad names that used to call in the Peoria area now gone I think it would be fair to say that the "gateway" has shifted to Galesburg. The TP&W never made it as a bridge route that bypassed Chicago. If it did, then maybe Peoria would have become the "gateway" that the brochure claimed it was back in '74. Now, the TP&W has dropped it's west end in favor of running trains to Galesburg.
CC
wallyworld wrote: Ethyl alcohol, denatured alcohol and beverage alcohol are loaded into tank cars for which TZPR performs all switching......."
Last I heard ADM in Peoria, stop making beverage alcohol.
Datafever wrote:What year is the map from?
1974. Year of my Official Railway Guide.
-Tiskilwa
Poppa_Zit wrote:I know it closed in the early 1970s, but was the Hiram Walker distillery a big shipper?
Yes, and I had a cousin who worked there. (I grew up about 30 miles from Peoria.) It was the "World's Largest Bourbon Distellery". They had to get the bourbon out - and the way to do it before the Interstates was in a carbox.
She told me that they kept track of their production based on the bottle lables. If it didn't get into a labled bottle they didn't put it on the books and didn't pay the Federal taxes. In those days this meant that too many people working at the distillery were drunk They'd grab an unlabled bottle when they arrived in the morning and sip through the day.
wallyworld wrote: Ethyl alcohol, denatured alcohol and beverage alcohol are loaded into tank cars for which TZPR performs all switching......." "Last I heard ADM in Peoria, stop making beverage alcohol.
"Last I heard ADM in Peoria, stop making beverage alcohol.
Unless this was a recent occurrance, ADM still makes beverage alcohol at its Peoria plant and ships it out in bulk (barge, rail and truck). ADM tank cars that have the number "3065" on their haz-mat placard handle beverage aclohol. Perhaps they have suspended production of that type of alcohol to concentrate on making fuel-grade alcohol.
By the way, I believe that was my quote.
DPJ
Hiram Walker & Sons operated its Peoria distillery (now ADM) through the end of 1981 per labor contracts. Demand for hard liquors took a nosedive in the early 1970's, so much so that Hiram Walker shutdown its Peoria distillery from late 1974 to early 1976. When it reopened, it operated at half-capacity. The final closure of the plant was announced in April 1979 and one year later was purchased by ADM. Hiram Walker operated the plant for ADM (alcohol made at the plant was at first shipped to Decatur for refining) from that time. The plant was then shut down in February 1981 so ethanol processing equipment could be installed. ADM ethanol operations commenced on June 1, 1981. ADM's Tabor Grain Co. subsidiary purchased the formerly Hiram Walker-owned Riverside Elevator Co. and also set up a major rail-to-barge transload operation. Hiram Walker continued to bottle liquors until October and shipping of product continued into December. By early 1982, the new plant in Fort Smith, Arkansas, built to replace the one in Peoria, opened. ADM went on to purchase the rest of the HW property (rackhouses and shipping warehouse) in 1983. Several capacity expansions since then have increased daily grain alcohol capacity from 125,000 gallons per day to more than five times that figure today.
The TZPR currently serves this plant, switching the alcohol loadout on the west side and having access to the ADM-owned "River Track" (ex-Rock Island Belt Line) on east side. TZPR delivers corn screenings (coming from ADM in Decatur via CN) probably for mixing with feed, corn (mostly from IAIS, occasionally from BNSF), corn gluten meal and distillers feed coming off the BNSF and/or IAIS for barge-to-rail transfer. Outbound business is alcohol and distillers dry and wet feed.
TP&W and UP access ADM directly via the River Track. TP&W delivers corn and UP delivers gluten feed pellets and corn screenings. Occasionally, UP delivers corn.
I'll get to Hiram Walker's history when I get the chance.
The Peoria Gateway was promoted by certain railroads as an alternative to congestion in Chicago and to some extent, St. Louis. The promotion of Peoria as a major interchange point began around the beginning of the 20th century and remained strong well into the 1960's. With fifteen railroads (13 line-hual and two terminal) serving Peoria as late as 1960, one can see the potential and why certain railroads (more so than others) exploited it.
Every railroad interchange with the other, some directly and some via either of the area's two terminal railroads - P&PU and the Rock Island's Peoria Terminal. The P&PU had the facilities to handle large quantities of traffic each day and so it far overshadowed PT in handling "intermediate" switching. Most traffic routed via Peoria was of an east-west orientation, although there much flowing north-south as well.
Postwar, the Peoria Gateway, tonnage-wise, probably peaked in the early 1950's when P&PU handled an average of about 2,000 cars a day, but generally declined steadily after that (spikes in traffic did occur in 1955-1956, 1961, 1970-1973 and finally 1979-1980 before the Staggers Rail Act, mergers and the liquidation of the Rock Island ended the last of the heavy traffic). Much traffic was being shifted to trucks after World War Two - the result of rising freight tariffs. Also, livestock traffic declined rapidly during the 1950's. The Peoria Union Stock Yards was once the seventh-largest in the nation so you can figure the impact. The Peoria Gateway was largely dimantled by Class 1 railroads, largely the result of mergers or the introduction of more efficient interchange at Chicago. The construction of interstate highways from the 1950's through the 1970's gave motor carriers a considerable advantage.
The first blow to the Peoria Gateway came after the Chicago & North Western absorbed the Minneapolis & St. Louis into its system on November 1, 1960, after which the heavy east-west oriented transcontinental traffic handled by time-freights 19 and 20 was mostly diverted via Chicago. The M&StL's major connections were New York Central (via P&PU and Peoria & Eastern), the Nickel Plate (via P&PU) and the TP&W. Nos. 19 and 20 may have gained some other traffic but traffic bound for St. Louis and points south was eventually shifted to the Nelson - St. Louis line.
The next blow came following the takeover of the Nickel Plate and the lease of the Wabash by the Norfolk & Western in October 1964. Changes did not come immediately, but as soon as track connections were in place (1965), N&W began to de-emphasize the Peoria Gateway. The biggest blow was to the TP&W, which carried quite a bit of bridge traffic between the Santa Fe at Lomax and the Nickel Plate at East Peoria.
Coal hauler Chicago & Illinois Midland was once a major player in handling merchandise traffic but a 1964 court ruling affecting ownership by utilities of non-utility related companies caused the demarketing of C&IM's bridge traffic between East Peoria, Springfield and Taylorville over the next several years (the C&IM acted as a connection to the B&O at Springfield). The Gulf, Mobile & Ohio and/or Illinois Terminal may have gained this business though
The next source of decline seems to have been the result of more efficient interchange between the Burlington and New York Central at Chicago that was implemented about 1965-1966. Also, NYC began utilizing the Kankakee Belt as a Chicago bypass in 1966, interchanging with Santa Fe at Streator, Rock Island at Utica and Burlington at Zearing. I've been told that the Peoria & Eastern lost a lot of Peoria - Indianapolis bridge traffic because of a reduction in train frequency c. 1965 (the then-general manager often had the remaining daily pair of trains annulled to "save money," so some lucrative business, such as the westbound auto frame traffic, was lost). The Penn Central merger of 1968 changed traffic flows and the 1970 bankruptcy did not help either.
The Burlington originated a lot of foodstuffs, livestock, meat and perishable traffic, sending it to eastern connections at Chicago or Peoria. This traffic was dwindling rapidly by the late 1960's and that meant fewer carloads interchanged to Norfolk & Western, New York Central and TP&W especially.
Carload-wise, traffic boomed during the early 1970's. Illinois Terminal closed its Farm Creek Yard in East Peoria in 1966 and had TP&W perform its terminal, switching and transfer functions. TP&W maintained direct connections with several IT interchange partners (Rock Island being the most significant), but it has been said that all interchange took place via P&PU. Whether that is true or not, IT replaced TP&W with P&PU in December 1969.
In January 1970, the soon-to-be Burlington Northern began interchanging unit coal trains with C&IM, a move which required P&PU switch engines to pull the trains, loaded and empty, across the Illinois River. There were loaded nine trains per week in 1972, so this traffic was a significant addition (subsequent changes by 1976 would reduce P&PU's involvement and subsequently eliminate it altogether - at least the terminal railroad benefitted revenue-wise from the use by BN and C&IM of trackage rights).
By the late 1970's, major use of the Peoria Gateway had dwindled to the following:
Rock Island was a part owner of the Illinois Terminal and traffic was heavy enough that each railroad pre-blocked interchange traffic for the other, which went through P&PU's East Peoria Yard. Rock Island and Illinois Central Gulf exchanged a significant amount of traffic via P&PU as well. Half of Rock Island's Peoria area business, whether switched local, or arriving/departing was interchanged with other railroads. When the Rock Island was forced into liquidation, ICG and especially ITC were hit hard by the loss of traffic.
The TP&W continued to function as a major east-west-bridge line. Joint-ownership by the Santa Fe and Pennsy meant that heavy traffic was handled between them, continuing through the Penn Central era and into the Conrail years. Traffic bridged between Santa Fe and Conrail each year in the late 1970's was abount 35,000 cars, nearly 100 a day). TP&W also acted as a bridge route between BN, RI and ITC at East Peoria and Conrail at Logansport. The liquidation of the Rock Island in 1980 cut off traffic and finally, in June 1981, Conrail canceled tariffs which favored routings such as ATSF-Fort Madison-TPW-Logansport-CR.
The Staggers Rail Act, which became law in October 1980, allowed railroads to shed themselves of unprofitable transit business, a lot of which went via Peoria. Illinois Terminal's takeover by Norfolk & Western in 1981 cut off a by-then small but steady user of the Peoria Gateway.
The Peoria Gateway experienced a brief revival in 1995-1999 when BNSF and Norfolk Southern shifted much of their interchange away from Chicago and instead routed it via P&PU.
The Peoria area still sees some major interchange, but almost all of consists of unit coal and grain trains or carload traffic interchanged between TZPR and its connections (only a small percentage is "through" traffic). Union Pacific delivers coal trains almost every day to the Illinois & Midland for forwarding to the Kincaid plant near Pawnee while BNSF hands off coal trains to CN (weekly to Decatur) and IMRR (several a week to Havana). Also, CN cycles about three 100-car unit grain trains between Iowa origins and the Tate & Lyle wet corn plant at Decatur via Peoria, using BNSF haulage rights. CN also hands off a few 100-car coal trains to IAIS each month. Occasionally, CN gives BNSF a unit feed train bound for Texas. A small, but steadily increasing carload interchange is developing between the Keokuk Junction Railway and Norfolk Southern.
Hiram Walker & Sons had what was the largest grain distillery in the world at Peoria. It opened in July 1934, and at the time it was sold to ADM, had 1,000 employees (850 of 'em worked in the rackhouses and shipping warehouse). The Rock Island served the riverfront side and P&PU served the west side. At one time, there was a connection between the Riverside Elevator Co. (adjacent to the distillery) and the Pabst Brewing Co. malthouse. It probably allowed Rock Island to serve Riverside Elevator, since access was from the P&PU side.
HW received coal for its power plant, probably from CB&Q-served mines in Fulton County until natural gas beame standard in the 1960's.
Oak whiskey barrels were manufactured at Hiram Walker's cooperage plant, located several blocks south on the CB&Q (wood staves were shipped from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin). Boxcars loaded with the barrels at the plant were switched out and delivered to P&PU on the other side of the tracks! Then P&PU would pull them and deliver to HW's bottling plant and warehouse (tracks that now serve the alcohol loadout).
HW probably used malted barley to convert corn starch to sugar so that it could be fermented. Perhaps the adjacent Pabst malthouse supplied them or perhaps malt was purchased from suppliers in the Upper Midwest, or both.
Grains such as corn, wheat, milo, rye and barley were delivered to the Riverside Elevator Co. (terminal elevator owned by HW) and HW had first right of inspection. The elevator was also used by the Peoria Board of Trade so grain other than for the distillery arrived here by rail (and some probably left by rail as well).
Both P&PU and Rock Island had spurs into the feedhouse, which was located on the riverfront side. Distillers grains were a by-product shipped from here, probably nationwide.
Hiram Walker shipped bulk liquors in tank cars to a packaging plant at Burlingame, California while most liquors were packaged and shipped to warehouses in boxcars or motor carriers. By the late 1950's, Hiram Walker was making use of TOFC.
I understand that oak whiskey barrels could not be re-used to age liquor and so most were probably shipped (by rail) to Canada, where they could be reused to age liquor. When the cooperage plant closed in 1972, all barrels were probably supplied from the main Walkerville, Ontario plant.
HW saw peak production about 1969, following a modernization project that led to the installation of undertrack pits at the elevator and plant (for the use of covered hoppers) and the construction of a new shipping warehouse.
Demand for hard liquor suddenly dropped in the early 1970's and so the Peoria distillery was temporarily closed in late 1974, reopening in 1976 at half-production capacity. Because of the over capacity, HW considered getting into the ethanol market. Tabor Grain began leasing the Riverside Elevator Co. in 1972 and bought it in 1979. HW then announced that its Peoria distillery would close and be replaced by a smaller facility in Fort Smith, Arkansas. ADM purchased the distillery in 1980, began ethanol production in 1981 and acquired the entire complex in 1983.
Today, ADM and ADM Growmark combined is the largest non-utility rail user in the Peoria area.
bn13814 wrote: The first blow to the Peoria Gateway came after the Chicago & North Western absorbed the Minneapolis & St. Louis into its system on November 1, 1960, after which the heavy east-west oriented transcontinental traffic handled by time-freights 19 and 20 was mostly diverted via Chicago. The M&StL's major connections were New York Central (via P&PU and Peoria & Eastern), the Nickel Plate (via P&PU) and the TP&W. Nos. 19 and 20 may have gained some other traffic but traffic bound for St. Louis and points south was eventually shifted to the Nelson - St. Louis line.
I would go back to 1954 when Heineman rescued the M&StL from bankruptcy. He then tried to add the Toledo, Peoria and Western and the Monon to create a route around Chicago. The PRR and the ATSF found out and bought the TP&W before he did. That caused Heineman to move on to the C&NW and save it from being absorbed by the Milwaukee Road.
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