Alton Railroad: Map, History, Timetables

Last revised: October 9, 2026

The Alton was the Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City railroad that the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio merged on May 31, 1947. It began as the Alton & Sangamon, chartered on February 27, 1847, to build from the Mississippi River at Alton to the state capital at Springfield. The first train made that 72-mile run on September 9, 1852. Under later names the line reached Chicago, East St. Louis, and Kansas City. The Baltimore & Ohio bought it at foreclosure in 1929, and the courts took it back on November 25, 1942.

Alton Railroad 4-6-2 5299 at Springfield MO c. 1945

Alton Railroad 4-6-2 #5299 (P-16A) is seen here at what is likely Springfield, Illinois, circa 1945. Walter A. Peters photo.

The map below is Rand McNally's sheet of the Alton Railroad Company, page 390 of the Official Guide, from the same 1937 issue as the four timetable pages. Daniel Willard was chairman of the board. The public folder carried the banner "No Extra Fare on any Train." The merged company's story, and the diesel that arrived as Baltimore & Ohio 50, are the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio.

Rand McNally map of the Alton Railroad Company and connecting lines, Official Guide page 390, 1937

Rand McNally's map of the Alton Railroad Company and connecting lines, Official Guide page 390, from the 1937 issue. The heavy line is Chicago to St. Louis and Kansas City, the triangle the railroad spent thirty years assembling. Copyright, Rand McNally & Company, Chicago.

On this page: At a glance · Alton & Sangamon · Chicago · The Kansas City triangle · Sleeper, diner, and bridge · Harriman, the Clover Leaf, and the receivers · The Baltimore & Ohio years · The 1937 timetable · May 31, 1947, and after

At a glance

Item	Detail
Railroad	Alton Railroad, 1931–1947. Earlier the Chicago & Alton Railroad and the Chicago & Alton Railway. Reporting marks A and C&A
Chartered	February 27, 1847, as the Alton & Sangamon. Alton to Springfield
First train	September 9, 1852, Alton to Springfield, 72 miles
Chicago & Alton	Incorporated February 18, 1861. Foreclosure organization in October 1862
Triangle	Chicago, East St. Louis, and Kansas City. Missouri leases of 1870 and 1878
Mileage	1,051 miles owned and operated, December 31, 1920 and 1921. The 1937 Official Guide prints 949
Baltimore & Ohio	Foreclosure purchase, 1929. Alton Railroad name, 1931. In reorganization from November 25, 1942
Into the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio	May 31, 1947
Headquarters	Chicago. The 1937 offices were 340–358 West Harrison Street
Gauge	Standard
Today	Union Pacific, Chicago–St. Louis. Canadian Pacific Kansas City on the Kansas City line. Metra's Heritage Corridor, Chicago–Joliet

Alton & Sangamon

On February 27, 1847, the Illinois legislature passed an act to construct a railroad from Alton, in Madison County, to Springfield, in Sangamon County. Robert Ferguson, Simeon Ryder, Benjamin Godfrey, Thomas Clifford, Robert Dunlap, and William Martin, and their associates, were named a body corporate under the style of the Alton & Sangamon Railroad Company. The charter ran thirty years. Capital was set at $500,000, with room to increase it to $1,000,000. The line was to run by way of Carlinville and New Berlin.

Godfrey was the builder who stayed with the work. Madison County's account has him living in a railcar as the railhead moved, and mortgaging his property to keep the job going. Construction materials reached Alton in the summer of 1850, and the first rails went down at the public landing that year. A marker on Belle Street records 779 men at work by January 1851. Abraham Lincoln was counsel for the company. He signed the Springfield subscription book opened on May 20, 1847. In the December 1851 term of the Illinois Supreme Court he appeared for the railroad in Banet v. Alton & Sangamon Railroad, a suit to collect a stock subscription.

On June 19, 1852, an act of the General Assembly changed the name to the Chicago & Mississippi Railroad Company. The new name stated the ambition. The track that existed still ended at Springfield. On September 9, 1852, the first locomotive made the trip from Alton to Springfield, 72 miles. On October 6 an excursion left St. Louis at six in the morning on the steamboat Cornelia and reached Springfield in the afternoon, where dinner was laid in a building put up for a machine shop. Godfrey spoke.

Chicago

The road reached Normal, the junction with the Illinois Central, on October 18, 1853. From there a traveler could change to the Illinois Central, leave it at La Salle for the Chicago & Rock Island, and be in Chicago, and the company advertised a rail journey to New York in sixty hours. Bloomington was in the timetable by 1854. On July 31, 1854, the first train from Bloomington arrived in Joliet, about eighty-five miles in two hours and thirty-five minutes. Joliet was the northern terminal that season. Passenger trains went on into Chicago over the Rock Island, without a change of cars, to La Salle Street. Freight was a different arrangement: cars were unloaded to canal boats on the Illinois & Michigan Canal for the last miles into the city.

The names changed as fast as the railhead. In February 1855 the legislature authorized the Chicago & Mississippi to combine with the Alton & Sangamon under the name Chicago, Alton & St. Louis. On January 21, 1857, a new act rechartered the property as the St. Louis, Alton & Chicago. The Chicago & Alton Railroad Company was incorporated by an act approved February 18, 1861, naming James Robb, Charles Moran, Adrian Iselin, Jacob Bunn, and others as commissioners. A federal decree of August 7, 1862, ordered the old company sold. The buyers organized the Chicago & Alton in October 1862. John Moses, in his history of Chicago, dates that organization October 16.

Chicago on the company's own rails waited for the Joliet & Chicago. That company was incorporated by special act on February 15, 1855. Henry A. Gardner, its first chief engineer, spent the spring and summer of 1855 on the surveys and drew the general plan in March 1856. The line, 36.25 miles, was built by the company's own forces in 1857 and 1858. Joliet to Lockport was finished in November 1857. The first service into Chicago ran in March 1858. On July 1, 1864, the Joliet & Chicago was leased in perpetuity to the Alton. Timothy B. Blackstone, president of the Joliet & Chicago, became president of the Chicago & Alton the same year. On May 2 and 3, 1865, the Lincoln funeral train passed Joliet on these tracks and went on to Springfield.

The Kansas City triangle

East St. Louis closed the south end of the Illinois main line. The Alton & St. Louis was chartered on February 4, 1859. The lease opened in 1864, and the railroad was into East St. Louis by 1865. In 1868 the company leased the St. Louis, Jacksonville & Chicago, a second route from Godfrey to Bloomington. A branch from Dwight to Washington and Lacon followed in 1869.

Kansas City came by two Missouri leases. In 1870 the Chicago & Alton leased the Louisiana & Missouri River Railroad, from Louisiana to the north bank of the Missouri opposite Jefferson City. In 1878 it leased the Kansas City, St. Louis & Chicago, from Mexico to Kansas City. Together with the Illinois main line, those leases were the Chicago–St. Louis–Kansas City triangle. Until the Santa Fe opened its shorter road in 1888, this was the shortest rail route from Chicago to Kansas City. The Wabash was the other railroad holding the same three cities.

The river crossing at Glasgow, Missouri, was the engineering piece of the Kansas City extension. Work began in May 1878 under General William Sooy Smith, with steel from A. F. Hay. Hagley dates the opening at November 1, 1879: five Whipple spans, about 2,700 feet, which Hagley calls the first all-steel railroad bridge to go into service. A marker at Glasgow dates the dedication to June 1879 and calls the structure the first large all-steel bridge. The railroad's own later advertising treated 1879 as the year of that first. The claim of a world first is contested. A Chicago & North Western draw span at Kinzie Street in Chicago, said to be of the same steel, opened about a month earlier. Glasgow remains the long all-steel railroad bridge the Alton put across the Missouri.

At the end of 1920, and again at the end of 1921, the Commercial & Financial Chronicle counted 1,051 miles owned and operated. Chicago to East St. Louis was 280 of them. Roodhouse to Kansas City was 251. The line from Bloomington to Wann, by way of Jacksonville, Godfrey, and Upper Alton, was 158. A joint eighteen miles with the Big Four ran from Wann into East St. Louis. Second main track on that system ran past 270 miles. The 1937 Official Guide prints a rounder total, 949, on the officer page reproduced below.

Sleeper, diner, and bridge

The Chicago & Alton kept a short list of passenger firsts, and the company told them as its own. In 1859 George M. Pullman and Benjamin C. Field converted coaches at the Bloomington shops, including the car known as Old No. 9. That sleeper made its first run between Chicago and St. Louis on September 1, 1859. The passenger-car page treats the Bloomington conversion as the first Pullman sleeper built in those shops, and separates it from The Pioneer of 1865, the first purpose-built sleeper.

Pullman's Delmonico was completed in 1867 at the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy shops in Aurora. It went into service on the Chicago & Alton in 1868 and is regarded as the first dining car. Sister cars were the Tremont and the Southern. Reclining-seat cars were an early assignment on the Chicago–St. Louis trains. The Glasgow bridge, above, is the third item on the same list the railroad liked to print.

The passenger locomotive of the Blackstone years was part of that reputation. Alton steam that reached the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio, including Pacific 5296, the former Chicago & Alton 656, photographed at Brighton, Illinois, in March 1947, is on the company page. The diesels of the merged railroad, serials and order numbers included, are the diesel roster.

Harriman, the Clover Leaf, and the receivers

In January 1899 a syndicate associated with Edward H. Harriman bought about 97 percent of the stock for $38,815,000, the figure George Kennan used in The Chicago & Alton Case (1916). The Chicago & Alton Railway was organized on April 2, 1900. On March 14, 1906, the property was consolidated again as the Chicago & Alton Railroad. The Rock Island held control for a time. In August 1907 the Toledo, St. Louis & Western, the Clover Leaf, bought the controlling stock from the Rock Island, $14,420,000 of common and $6,480,000 of preferred, and deposited it under collateral-trust bonds. Interest on those bonds went unpaid on August 1, 1914. The bonds were cancelled in November 1921, and the stock came back to the Chicago & Alton.

Receivers William G. Bierd and W. W. Wheelock were appointed on August 30, 1922. The mortgages were already old: an issue of 1889 for $45 million, an issue of 1900 for $22 million through the Farmers Loan & Trust, and an issue of 1912 for $18 million. TIME, in the week of July 15, 1929, reported that Federal Judge George A. Carpenter had ordered the road sold. The Baltimore & Ohio bought it at that foreclosure. Daniel Willard, looking toward Kansas City from Baltimore, was the president who wanted the triangle.

The Baltimore & Ohio years

The Alton Railroad Company was incorporated on January 5, 1931. The New York Times of January 24, 1931, reported the new name. The old Chicago & Alton company was dissolved on May 17, 1933, the date the Newberry Library's note gives, the property already in the Alton Railroad. Willard stayed chairman. The 1937 Official Guide places the general offices at 340–358 West Harrison Street in Chicago, and names H. B. Voorhees, vice-president, in charge of all departments there. George M. Shriver was vice-president at Baltimore for finance. The sheet's total mileage is 949.

Alton Railroad Company officers and traffic representatives, Official Guide, 1937, Daniel Willard chairman

Official Guide page for the Alton Railroad Company, 1937, facing the map. Daniel Willard, chairman of the board, Baltimore. H. B. Voorhees, vice-president, Chicago, in charge of all departments. General offices, 340–358 West Harrison Street. The sheet prints a total mileage of 949, and a long list of off-line traffic representatives.

The Kansas City plan died in the Depression, and the war finished it. The Alton was in reorganization from November 25, 1942, the date the New York Times later used. On October 22, 1946, the Times reported that Judge John P. Barnes had confirmed a Gulf, Mobile & Ohio plan. Henry A. Gardner was trustee, a later man than the engineer of 1855. The Gulf, Mobile & Ohio assumed equipment obligations of $4,410,598 as of December 31, 1944, and the plan issued $22,675,000 of general-mortgage 4 percent bonds of 2044, with 328,787 shares of no-par stock, scaled to the old Chicago & Alton 3 percent refunding bonds. The merger itself is May 31, 1947.

The 1937 timetable

The three pages that follow are the public timetable of that summer, still under the Baltimore & Ohio's chairman, and still under the Alton name. Table 1, Chicago to St. Louis by way of Springfield, took effect on July 26, 1937. Chicago Union Station is the downtown terminal on these sheets, a station the Alton used in company with the Pennsylvania, the Burlington, and the Milwaukee Road. St. Louis is Union Station.

Alton Railroad Table 1, Chicago, Springfield, and St. Louis, effective July 26, 1937, Alton Limited and Abraham Lincoln

Official Guide, Table 1, the Chicago, Springfield, and St. Louis line, effective July 26, 1937. Trains 1 and 4 are the Alton Limited. Trains 2 and 3 are the Abraham Lincoln, marked as the streamline train. The Fast Mail, the Midnight Special, the Prairie State Express, and the Mail share the table. The banner reads "No Extra Fare on any Train."

The Alton Limited, trains 1 and 4, was the heavy Chicago–St. Louis train: an observation parlor-lounge, parlor cars with drawing rooms, a tavern lounge with radio, and a dining car, all of it air-conditioned. The Abraham Lincoln, trains 2 and 3, is the streamliner. Its equipment note lists leather-upholstered reclining-seat chairs, parlor cars, a 30-seat dining room and a 10-seat tavern set in the center of the car, and an oil-burning range. The Midnight Special, trains 9 and 10, carried open-section, drawing-room, and compartment sleepers, a 13-section sleeper, and the De Luxe Lounge Cafe Car. The Fast Mail, the Prairie State Express, and The Mail filled out the same Chicago–St. Louis card.

The streamliner had arrived in two steps, and the locomotive a year after the cars. In 1935 the Baltimore & Ohio sent a Cor-Ten steel trainset west and named it the Abraham Lincoln. The Bloomington Pantagraph dates the first trip at July 1, 1935, with the steam locomotive Lady Baltimore on the point. Electro-Motive's boxcab, Baltimore & Ohio 50, 1,800 horsepower, built in August 1935 as serial 532 on order E127, came to the Alton in April 1936 for that train. Its first regular run out of Bloomington was April 27, 1936. The locomotive was painted royal blue with gold. The Abraham Lincoln page calls the train the first streamliner on the St. Louis–Chicago run.

In 1937 the aluminum Royal Blue set came west as well. With both sets on the Alton, the aluminum equipment took the Abraham Lincoln assignment and the Cor-Ten set became the Ann Rutledge, named for the New Salem woman linked with Lincoln. Baltimore & Ohio EA and EB diesels 51 through 56, delivered that year, were assigned to the two trains. Boxcab 50 became Gulf, Mobile & Ohio 1200, was retired in 1956, and stands at the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, on the Missouri museum page. Consist, later timetable, and the Amtrak years of the name are the Abraham Lincoln page. The unit's later life is the diesel roster.

Alton Railroad Tables 2 and 3, Chicago to Kansas City, July 26, 1937, and Roodhouse to St. Louis, April 25, 1937

Official Guide, Table 2, Chicago and Kansas City, effective July 26, 1937, and Table 3, Roodhouse to St. Louis, April 25, 1937. The Hummer is the Chicago–Kansas City daytime train. Trains 18 and 19 are the Ann Rutledge. Trains 25 and 26 are the Night Hawk, St. Louis to Kansas City. Trains 29 and 30 are the Ozark State Zephyr.

The Hummer was the daytime Chicago–Kansas City chair-car train, with a lunch counter. The Ann Rutledge on this sheet, trains 18 and 19, is the Chicago–St. Louis streamliner already named above, its equipment spelled out beside the Kansas City tables. The Night Hawk, trains 25 and 26, was the St. Louis–Kansas City night train, with open-section sleepers handed every third day to Los Angeles, one set by the Santa Fe and one by the Rock Island and the Southern Pacific. The same page advertises a Chicago–Tulsa–Oklahoma City sleeper by way of the Frisco, and a Chicago–Little Rock–Hot Springs sleeper by way of the Missouri Pacific.

Trains 29 and 30 are the Ozark State Zephyr, a joint streamliner of the Alton and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. It began on December 20, 1936, a single round trip between St. Louis and Kansas City, about 279 miles in five and a half hours, part of the route on Alton track. The articulated trainset was Burlington equipment, one of the original Twin Cities Zephyr sets, and the nose herald on the joint service read Alton Burlington. The name lasted until April 30, 1939, when the General Pershing Zephyr took the same run. The July 1937 sheet still carries trains 29 and 30 under the older name.

Alton Railroad Table 5, St. Louis to Kansas City, June 6, 1937, with branch tables and through sleeping cars

Official Guide, Table 5, St. Louis, Louisiana, and Kansas City, effective June 6, 1937, with the Night Hawk and the Ozark State Zephyr on that card. Branch tables cover Carrollton, Varna and Lacon, Peoria and Springfield, Dwight and Washington (July 26, 1937), and Mexico to Fulton (December 20, 1936). Through sleeping cars are advertised St. Louis to Los Angeles by the Santa Fe, and by the Rock Island and Southern Pacific via Tucumcari.

May 31, 1947, and after

The Gulf, Mobile & Ohio merged the Alton on May 31, 1947. That date is the Chicago reach of the southern railroad chartered in 1938. The Abraham Lincoln and the Ann Rutledge kept their names. The Gulf, Mobile & Ohio dropped the Ann Rutledge on April 27, 1958. The Abraham Lincoln ran through to Amtrak on May 1, 1971. Sleeping cars on the old Chicago–St. Louis line lasted through December 31, 1969, and dining cars until that Amtrak day. Amtrak revived the Ann Rutledge name in 1976. Both names lasted until 2009, when the Chicago–St. Louis trains became the Lincoln Service.

Illinois Central Gulf took the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio on August 10, 1972. In 1987 the former Alton lines, Chicago to Kansas City by way of Springfield and St. Louis, went to the Chicago, Missouri & Western. In 1989 the Southern Pacific took the Chicago–St. Louis line. In January 1990 the Kansas City line opened as the Gateway Western. Union Pacific absorbed the Southern Pacific in 1996. Kansas City Southern later took the Gateway Western, and that line is now Canadian Pacific Kansas City. Chicago to Joliet is Metra's Heritage Corridor, on the commuter page: Canadian National owns the line, and Union Pacific uses it. Amtrak's Lincoln Service is the Chicago–St. Louis passenger train on the old main.

Sources

Act of February 27, 1847, "to construct a railroad from Alton, in Madison county, to Springfield, in Sangamon county." Incorporators, the thirty-year term, capital of $500,000 increasable to $1,000,000, and the route by Carlinville and New Berlin. Banet v. Alton & Sangamon Railroad, 13 Ill. 504, December term 1851, Abraham Lincoln for the company. The Papers of Abraham Lincoln also cite a printing of the laws dated February 29, 1847. This page uses the date in the case. The Alton & Sangamon marker at Belle Street and West 5th Street, Alton, records 779 men at work by January 1851. Madison County's railroad history is the account of Godfrey living in a railcar and mortgaging his property to finish the road. The Springfield subscription book, opened May 20, 1847, carries Lincoln's signature
D. W. Yungmeyer, "An Excursion into the Early History of the Chicago and Alton Railroad," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. The act of June 19, 1852, changing the name to the Chicago & Mississippi. The first locomotive, Alton to Springfield, September 9, 1852, and the October 6 excursion on the steamboat Cornelia. Completion to Normal, October 18, 1853. The Joliet & Chicago, incorporated February 15, 1855, Henry A. Gardner's surveys, construction in 1857 and 1858, 36.25 miles, leased in perpetuity on July 1, 1864. The same journal notes the Chicago & North Western's Kinzie Street draw span, of steel said to match Glasgow's, opened about a month before that bridge
Blackhawk Railway Historical Society, Will County. The first train from Bloomington into Joliet, July 31, 1854. Passenger trains beyond Joliet over the Rock Island. Freight by canal boat. The Lincoln funeral train through Joliet, May 2 and 3, 1865. Joliet to Lockport in November 1857, and Chicago in March 1858
Papers of Abraham Lincoln, organization note for the Chicago, Alton & St. Louis. The combination authorized in February 1855. "An Act to Incorporate the St. Louis, Alton and Chicago Railroad Company," January 21, 1857
John Moses, History of Chicago. The act approved February 18, 1861, naming Robb, Moran, Iselin, Jacob Bunn, and others. The sale decree of August 7, 1862. Organization of the Chicago & Alton effected October 16, 1862. Timothy B. Blackstone
Newberry Library, Illinois Central archives biographical note. Chicago & Alton incorporated February 18, 1861. Chicago & Alton Railway organized April 2, 1900. Alton Railroad Company incorporated January 5, 1931. The old company dissolved May 17, 1933. The library's "acquired in 1946" is the confirmed plan, and the merger day remains May 31, 1947
Commercial & Financial Chronicle. 1,051 miles owned and operated at December 31, 1920, and at December 31, 1921, with the segment miles used above and second main track past 270 miles. Receivers William G. Bierd and W. W. Wheelock, August 30, 1922. The Railway of 1900, the consolidation of March 14, 1906, and the Clover Leaf purchase of August 1907
George Kennan, The Chicago & Alton Case: A Study in Railway Finance (1916). The January 1899 purchase of about 97 percent of the stock for $38,815,000
TIME, July 15, 1929. Judge George A. Carpenter's sale order. Receivership since 1922. The mortgages of 1889 ($45 million), 1900 ($22 million), and 1912 ($18 million)
Kirk Reynolds and David Oroszi, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (Osceola: MBI, 2000). The 1929 foreclosure purchase. The Alton Railroad name is the New York Times, January 24, 1931
New York Times, October 22, 1946. Reorganization since November 25, 1942. Judge John P. Barnes confirmed the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio plan. Trustee Henry A. Gardner. Equipment obligations of $4,410,598 as of December 31, 1944. General-mortgage 4s of 2044, $22,675,000, and 328,787 no-par shares
The Official Guide, 1937, pages 390–394, reproduced above. Rand McNally map. Willard, Voorhees, West Harrison Street, mileage 949. Tables effective July 26, 1937, with the Roodhouse table of April 25, 1937, the St. Louis–Kansas City table of June 6, 1937, and the Mexico–Fulton table of December 20, 1936
Hagley Museum, on the Glasgow bridge: work from May 1878, in service November 1, 1879, five Whipple spans, about 2,700 feet, General William Sooy Smith and A. F. Hay steel. The Glasgow marker dates a June 1879 dedication. The world-first wording is the railroad's claim, qualified above
Pantagraph (Bloomington), June 19, 2011, "Diesel revolution came to Alton Railroad in 1936." Abraham Lincoln debut July 1, 1935, behind Lady Baltimore. Boxcab 50's first regular Bloomington run, April 27, 1936. The 1937 transfer of the aluminum set, and the Cor-Ten set becoming the Ann Rutledge
The site's passenger-car page, for Old No. 9 on September 1, 1859, and for Delmonico, completed in 1867 at Aurora and regarded as the first dining car. In service on the Chicago & Alton in 1868, with the Tremont and the Southern
Gene V. Glendinning, The Chicago & Alton Railroad: The Only Way (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002). The standard monograph
Chicago & Alton 1879 depot history, Independence, Missouri, for the corporate outline that matches the dates above, and the Missouri museum page for the 1879 depot, the 1996 move to 318 West Pacific Avenue, and the 1992–2002 restoration

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