Illinois Terminal Railroad: Map, Roster, Photos, History

Last revised: October 24, 2026

For a generation of central Illinois, the interurban was simply the Traction. The cars were the Illinois Traction System, William B. McKinley’s electric railroad from the coal towns south of Danville to the Mississippi. Shippers knew the later company by the name it took from a small steam switcher at Alton. On October 18, 1937, that name, Illinois Terminal, covered the whole railroad.

The Road Of Personalized Services was the slogan, and it fit a carrier that had learned to live on carload freight. Dr. George W. Hilton and John F. Due, in The Electric Interurban Railways in America, call it the largest end-to-end traction system in the country, 462 route miles in 1950. Passengers rode named trains, parlor cars, and, into 1940, sleeping cars. Freight, once an accident of the coal field, grew until a postwar year could gross what a regional Class I grossed. The Monon was the comparison they reached for.

Eleven trunk lines bought the property in 1956, after the railroad had already begun taking up its eastern and northern passenger lines. Norfolk & Western purchased the other owners’ interests on September 1, 1981, and took control on May 8, 1982. The cars, the electric locomotives, the steam, and the diesels each have their own roster.

An Illinois Terminal streamliner set at the terminal in East Peoria, Illinois, circa 1950

A streamliner set at the new terminal in East Peoria, Illinois, circa 1950. St. Louis Car Company built three such sets in 1948 and 1949. James Stitzel photo. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · The name · McKinley · Building the square · The bridge · The Valley line · Power company · Sleeping cars · Streamliners · Freight · Eleven owners · Norfolk & Western

At a glance

Item	Detail
Headquarters	St. Louis, Missouri (1221 Locust Street)
States served	Illinois, and St. Louis
Dates of operation	October 20, 1901 – May 7, 1982. The Alton switcher that lent the name opened in 1895
Public name	Illinois Traction System, until the railroad of October 18, 1937
Formation	Illinois Traction Company, 1904. One railroad from October 18, 1937
Genesis	Danville, Paxton & Northern Railroad, incorporated December 2, 1899
Route miles	462 (1950)
Track gauge	4 feet, 8½ inches
Principal lines	St. Louis–Peoria. Springfield–Danville. Decatur–Bloomington–Mackinaw Junction. Alton–Edwardsville–East St. Louis. Alton–Granite City–East St. Louis. Venice–Mitchell–Grafton. Troy Junction–O’Fallon
Locomotives in 1950	Diesels 18. Steam 14. Electric 38. Battery diesel-electric 2. Battery trolley 1. Diesel trolley 1. A year count
Diesels in 1981	40, a year count. The all-time list is the diesel roster
Rolling stock in 1950	Freight cars 1,868. Passenger cars 63. The cars are a separate roster
Slogan	The Road Of Personalized Services
Reporting mark	ITC
Successor	Norfolk & Western

The Illinois Terminal Railroad logo. Author’s work.

The name

Under the wire sat a steam railroad that had nothing to do with passengers. The Illinois Terminal Railroad was formed on July 8, 1895, by the Illinois Glass Company, to switch that company’s plant at Alton. By January 11, 1900, the track had reached LeClaire, at Edwardsville. It was spun off in 1907, and in 1922 the corporate name became the Illinois Terminal Company. For two decades it remained a local switcher. The interurban that people rode was a different family of companies, gathered in 1904 as the Illinois Traction Company and known on the cars, the timetables, and the depots as the Illinois Traction System.

In Champaign the system kept a headquarters worthy of the name. The Illinois Traction Building, finished in 1913 to plans by Joseph Royer, was depot and office both. It later housed the power company, and it is on the National Register of Historic Places. Downstate, the mechanical heart was the shop at Decatur, where the big freight motors were built and rebuilt. Steam that came with the Alton lines worked out of Federal, the shop near Alton.

McKinley

William Brown McKinley was born in Petersburg on September 5, 1856, and made his money as an investment broker in Champaign. His method was the one a lot of interurban promoters used, carried further than most of them managed. Buy the local street railway. That purchase brought a franchise, a powerhouse, and a way through town. Then build the interurban out from those tracks.

He started with the Danville Street Railway & Light Company, acquired on July 18, 1900. The Danville, Paxton & Northern, incorporated on December 2, 1899, was the paper railroad he bought next. Its promoters had talked first of a steam road and then of an interurban, Danville to Paxton, more than 40 miles. No rail was down when he took it. The Danville, Paxton & Northern had been aimed at Paxton. The first six miles McKinley opened, on October 20, 1901, ran south to Westville.

Westville was a coal town, and so was Georgetown. A short branch reached Catlin on May 29, 1902. Local interests built the next piece themselves, a little more than four miles from Westville to Georgetown, and opened it on August 27, 1902. The passenger charter had looked northwest. The freight that paid the early bills sat at the south end of those first miles, in the Danville field, and coal stayed on the railroad for the rest of its life.

The Danville, Urbana & Champaign Railway, incorporated on July 31, 1902, took the Danville, Paxton & Northern’s assets on April 24, 1903. East of Champaign it was to join St. Joseph with Urbana, about 12 miles, and the small Urbana & Champaign Railway covered the last step into Champaign. St. Joseph–Urbana was ready on November 9, 1902. Through cars from Danville waited on a substation at Fithian and began on September 6, 1903. The eastern lines used the 600-volt direct current that Midwestern interurbans already understood. A branch to Homer, by way of Ogden, opened on May 25, 1905. Ridge Farm, beyond Georgetown, followed on October 1, 1905.

He was elected a trustee of the University of Illinois in 1902, and he stayed with the railroad after the voters sent him to Washington. He entered the House as a Republican on March 4, 1905, served until March 3, 1913, lost the seat in 1912, and returned for March 4, 1915, through March 3, 1921. Illinois elected him to the Senate in 1920. He took that oath on March 4, 1921, and died in office, at Martinsville, Indiana, on December 7, 1926. He is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Champaign. The bridge across the Mississippi carries his name. So does the health center at the university. In December 1923, while he was still chairman of the power company that held the railroad and still a senator, he endowed a chair there in the economics of public utilities.

Building the square

St. Louis was the prize, the country’s second-busiest gateway, and in 1903 it was still a separate railroad on paper. The Decatur, Springfield & St. Louis Railway was incorporated on May 28, 1903, with no track connecting it to Danville or Champaign. The Decatur Street Railway & Light Company gave him the streets of Decatur. A defunct right-of-way gave him a corridor along the north side of Springfield. He kept buying the city company, then building out from it.

Southwest of Springfield the map is a stack of those subsidiaries. Springfield–Decatur was built as the Illinois Central Traction Company and opened on September 25, 1904, the Springfield Consolidated Railway handing the cars into the capital. Paul H. Stringham, in Illinois Terminal: The Electric Years, tells the fight to put a crossing of the Illinois Central in at Capitol Avenue. The steam roads saw an interurban as a threat to their passenger business, and sometimes to their freight, and east of the Mississippi they usually refused to deal. The Chicago Great Western was the exception that mattered. It wanted the interchange.

Illinois Terminal express car 1202 at the station in Decatur, Illinois, circa 1950

Express car 1202 at the station in Decatur, Illinois, circa 1950. James Stitzel photo. American-Rails.com collection.

North of Springfield and Decatur the square of the system went in by the same method:

Springfield & North Eastern Traction, formed on April 28, 1906, out of the Springfield & North Eastern Railroad, opened Springfield–Lincoln on December 15, 1906.
The Chicago, Bloomington & Decatur, created on August 19, 1905, opened Decatur–Bloomington on August 1, 1906.
The Peoria, Bloomington & Champaign Traction, established in April 1905, opened Bloomington–Peoria by way of Mackinaw on April 21, 1907.
The Peoria, Lincoln & Springfield Traction, incorporated on April 18, 1907, opened the Lincoln–Mackinaw connector on New Year’s Day, 1908. A rider could then go from Peoria to East St. Louis by way of Springfield.

The eastern lines, and most of the rest, ran on 600-volt direct current. Springfield–Peoria and Peoria–Bloomington were built for something else: 33,000-volt alternating current, stepped to 3,300 volts at the substations and to 250 volts by transformers carried on the cars. The company lived with that arrangement for two years. On July 8, 1909, those lines went over to the direct current used everywhere else on the system.

One gap remained inside the square. The St. Louis, Decatur & Champaign Railway was formed on May 26, 1906, to run east from Decatur through Bement and Monticello and meet the Champaign line. Construction started that spring. Regular service opened on June 16, 1907. Danville, Champaign, Decatur, Springfield, and Peoria were then one electric railroad, still short of the Mississippi.

The bridge

South of Springfield he renamed the Decatur, Springfield & St. Louis as the St. Louis & Springfield on December 28, 1903, and pointed it at Staunton. The St. Louis & North Eastern, incorporated on December 22, 1904, was to finish the job into Granite City, on the east bank opposite downtown St. Louis. Work toward Staunton was underway by June 1903. The track was finished on October 31, 1905. Full service, and the line the St. Louis & North Eastern was building north from Granite City through Edwardsville, opened together on February 16, 1906.

He still had no rails of his own across the river. The Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis made interchange a fight, and East St. Louis stayed hostile into late 1906. A scheduled train into the city required his own bridge.

The St. Louis Electric Terminal Railway was formed on March 8, 1906. By May 1907 its track had reached the east bank at Venice, and private land was in hand on the west bank near Salisbury Street. Construction of the bridge began that August and took three years. While McKinley was in the House, the crews finished the greatest span in the city. The McKinley Bridge was double-tracked, with a highway lane on each flank, about 8,000 feet long, and the western approach ran another 2,700 feet. It cost $4.5 million. Regular service began on October 1, 1910, and the trains ended their run at Lucas Avenue, in the streets.

The streets lasted until a new St. Louis terminal opened for passengers in 1933. Freight had begun using the building the year before. Trains came off the bridge onto a line of elevated and surface track and dropped below the street to reach the station. The McKinley Bridge still carries highway traffic, and people on foot, long after the wire came down.

System map (1940)

An official 1940 system map of the Illinois Terminal Railroad. Author’s collection.

The Valley line

Chicago was the other dream. Mike Schafer, in Classic American Railroads: Volume III, puts it plainly: the northern line was aimed there. In 1904 McKinley had already gathered the rail operation into the Illinois Traction Company. The disconnected piece north of Peoria began as the Chicago, Ottawa & Peoria, incorporated on April 19, 1907, to take over the Illinois Valley Railway. It grew east and west of Ottawa and reached Joliet, Streator, and Princeton. The gap from Peoria to that railroad, and the gap from Joliet into Chicago, stayed open.

Five things kept the through route from being finished. The money, and above all the cost of the Mississippi bridge, came first. Riding was already falling off by the 1920s. The Valley towns produced little carload freight. There was no link that would have made the line a bridge route. The Depression then finished what had been built. On December 31, 1922, the Chicago, Ottawa & Peoria was consolidated into the Traction as the Illinois Valley Division, a property that had taken an investment of about $15 million and was still only a corner of the McKinley lines. The Spring Valley–Ladd branch came out on July 1, 1923. Ottawa–Streator, 17.2 miles, came out on August 25, 1928. On September 29, 1929, the 72.9 miles from DePue to Joliet were deeded to a last company, the Illinois Valley Railroad, which built a 3.18-mile freight belt through Ottawa in 1930 and tried once more for the carload business. The whole of it was abandoned on May 13, 1934.

Power company

Along the industrialized east bank, the 1920s still added railroad. The St. Louis, Troy & Eastern, acquired in 1925, reached Troy. The Alton & Eastern, acquired in 1926, brought the business between East St. Louis and Grafton. The St. Louis & Alton, acquired in 1930, reached Alton. New construction carried the line as far south as O’Fallon. Those were switching and terminal roads, the sort of property a freight railroad could use, and they sat on top of the 1895 glass-plant switcher that would eventually give the system its name.

By then the famous interurban was the smaller half of a utility. The Commercial and Financial Chronicle of April 7, 1923, describing the new Illinois Power & Light Corporation, reported that about 70 percent of the net earnings came from electric light, power, gas, and the other business besides transportation. North American Light & Power was acquiring control. Clement Studebaker, Jr., of the South Bend automobile family, was president. McKinley was chairman. Illinois Traction, Inc., a subsidiary, was to own the trunk-line electric railroad, and the mortgage behind the financing reached the McKinley Bridge.

On December 11, 1923, McKinley deeded to the University of Illinois $100,000 par of that company’s 7 percent preferred stock, yielding $7,000 a year, to endow the chair in the economics of public utilities. He was chairman of the company, and he was a sitting senator, and he still had not let go of the property he had started in Danville.

Samuel Insull’s group and the North American group each held half of North American Light & Power when Illinois Power & Light was formed. After Insull’s pyramid collapsed, the North American Company kept the utility. In 1928 Illinois Power & Light acquired the Illinois Terminal Company, and the Terminal leased the rail holdings. The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 then required the great utility pyramids to come apart. On October 18, 1937, a new Illinois Terminal Railroad consolidated the Illinois Terminal Company and everything it leased. From that day the interurban was one company, under the switcher’s name, standing apart from the power business.

Illinois Terminal car 284 on the wye in Decatur, Illinois, circa 1950

Car 284 on the wye in Decatur, Illinois, circa 1950. James Stitzel photo. American-Rails.com collection.

Sleeping cars

The railroad had been built for passengers, and for a few years it carried them in a style almost no other interurban attempted. Holland sleeping cars ran between Springfield and St. Louis. By 1911, the Electric Railway Journal could describe a daily Peoria–St. Louis sleeper that left at 11:30 at night and reached the other end at 7:05 in the morning, 175 miles, with a second sleeper set out and picked up at Springfield. The cars were open for occupancy at 9 in the evening and could be held until 7:30 in the morning. Classic Trains counts the Illinois Traction among only three interurbans that ever ran sleeping cars. The service lasted into 1940.

The Owl was the St. Louis–Peoria overnight, with an observation carrying a drumhead. The Illini was the Champaign sleeper, and it joined the Owl south of Springfield. The Illmo Limited was the daylight flagship, with a buffet-lounge and a parlor-observation. The public timetable, including the January 1930 Official Guide, carried a longer list of names:

Capitol Limited, St. Louis–Peoria
City of Decatur, St. Louis–Decatur
Fort Crevecoeur, St. Louis–Peoria
Illini, St. Louis–Champaign
Illmo Limited, St. Louis–Peoria
Mound City, St. Louis–Peoria
Owl, St. Louis–Peoria
Peoria Flyer, St. Louis–Peoria
St. Louis Flyer, Peoria–St. Louis
Sangamon, St. Louis–Peoria

Illinois Terminal streamliner trainset 300 in service, circa 1950

Streamliner 300 in service, circa 1950. Henry Georg photo.

Illinois Terminal cars 1202 and 284 at the station in Decatur, Illinois, circa 1954

Cars 1202 and 284, both from the St. Louis Car Company, at Decatur, Illinois, circa 1954. James Stitzel photo. American-Rails.com collection.

Streamliners

After the sleepers were gone, the railroad made one last try at the rider. St. Louis Car Company built the cars in 1948 and 1949: three baggage-coach combines, 300–302; two coaches, 330 and 331; and three parlor-diner-observations. The observations carried names, in number order. No. 350 was the Louis Joliet. No. 351 was the Shadrach Bond. No. 352 was the Pierre Laclede.

The first new set made an exhibition run from Springfield to Peoria on October 29, 1948. South of Lincoln, at Fogarty siding, the speed was 76 miles an hour. The trains were handsome, and the riding kept falling. Intercity passenger service ended in 1956. All eight cars went that year to Biermann Iron & Metal. The bodies were still together in the scrapyard into the early 1980s. None were saved. Suburban service between St. Louis and Granite City lasted until June 21, 1958. Car 277, and the parlor Sangamon, are at the Illinois Railway Museum. The rest of the fleet, streamliners included, is on the car roster.

Freight

The passenger railroad had been given a freight business by the Danville coal field, and the freight outgrew the railroad that was carrying it. Coal, merchandise, grain, and perishables, the last of those in a handful of refrigerator cars, moved in trains that street track could not hold. Belt lines went around Springfield, Decatur, and Edwardsville. In 1927 the Wabash and the Illinois Central electrified pieces of their own track around Champaign and Urbana, and the Terminal used that track to stay out of those towns as well.

The motors grew with the tonnage. Small Class A steeple-cabs gave way to Class B box motors, rated at 800 horsepower, and then to the Class C. In 1940, 1941, and 1942 the Decatur shop rebuilt five of the Class C frames as Class D locomotives, eight motors, 1,800 horsepower, 217,000 pounds. The railroad was still, in the main, laid with the 70-pound rail it had been built on, and a Class D weighed about as much as an early GP7. Those locomotives are on the electric roster.

The money followed the freight. The freight gross was $1.6 million in 1924, $2.2 million in 1926, and $11 million in 1954, beside $600,000 in passenger earnings that year. For most interurbans, six figures was a good year. The postwar gross stood with the Monon’s.

Lines that had never been under wire, and the switching inherited with the Alton roads, kept a small steam fleet at Federal. Three Baldwin 2-8-2s, 30–32, arrived as late as July 1929. Steam ended on June 30, 1950, when 2-6-0 No. 21 dropped its fire. The Moguls, the Mikados, and the 0-8-0s are on the steam roster.

Eleven owners

The shrinking started while the railroad was still on its own. Danville–Ogden came out in 1952, and a year later the cutback had reached Champaign. Forsyth–Mackinaw and Alton–Grafton came out in 1953. Stockholders met in Springfield on November 19, 1954, and approved a sale to a group of trunk lines at $20,015,635. Of 500,000 shares of common stock, 78.9 percent voted in favor. Two-thirds had been required. The Interstate Commerce Commission approved the sale on April 2, 1956, and it was consummated on June 15, 1956.

The buyers were the eleven connections that already met the Illinois Terminal at St. Louis and in central Illinois: the Baltimore & Ohio; the Chicago & Eastern Illinois; the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific; the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; the St. Louis-San Francisco; the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio; the Illinois Central; the Litchfield & Madison; the New York Central; the Nickel Plate; and the Wabash. The new company they formed was capitalized at 2,000 shares, against a note that was not to exceed the purchase price. The McKinley Bridge was intended for sale to the Bi-State Development Agency at $13,500,000, the railroad leasing back the track it still needed.

The buyers took down the wire and moved the through freight onto trackage rights over lines they already owned. Alco switchers and road-switchers had arrived in 1948. After June 21, 1958, the Illinois Terminal was a diesel freight railroad. The largest power came later: SD39s at the end of the 1960s, and GP38-2s in 1977. A renumbering in 1967 and 1968 put the road numbers in line with horsepower. The full list, 62 locomotives, is the diesel roster.

Norfolk & Western

By the early 1980s most of the eleven owners were ready to be done with the property. Norfolk & Western, which had already absorbed the Wabash and the Nickel Plate, was ready to keep it. On June 1, 1980, the Illinois Terminal, the Norfolk & Western, and the other owning railroads signed a coordination agreement and a plan to liquidate the assets. On December 23, 1980, the Norfolk & Western and the Illinois Terminal asked the Interstate Commerce Commission, in Finance Docket 29455, for authority to sell the equipment and the principal assets. The Commission granted the petitions on June 19, 1981.

Norfolk & Western purchased the other owners’ interests on September 1, 1981. The railroad’s last independent day was May 7, 1982, and control passed on May 8. Track still in service at the end included Granite City–Alton and Madison–Edwardsville–Alton. Between Decatur and Peoria the old electric line was already gone. On April 1, 1976, the day Conrail began, a former Pennsylvania Railroad branch of 57 miles in that same territory came up for sale, and the Illinois Terminal bought it. The service that remained there ran from Maroa, near Decatur, to Farmdale Junction at Peoria.

Pieces of the railroad still earn their keep under Norfolk Southern. Many of the substations are still standing, most of them abandoned and in poor condition. The larger story is the interurban family this one outlasted.

Norfolk Southern SD70ACe 1072 in Illinois Terminal heritage paint at Spencer, North Carolina, in July 2012

Norfolk Southern SD70ACe 1072, in Illinois Terminal colors, at the heritage celebration in Spencer, North Carolina, in early July 2012. Dan Robie photo.

Sources

George W. Hilton and John F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in America. The 462 miles in 1950, the east-bank acquisitions, and the comparison with the Monon.
Paul H. Stringham, Illinois Terminal: The Electric Years (Interurban Press, 1989). The Capitol Avenue crossing, the streamliner exhibition of October 29, 1948, and the car, electric, steam, and diesel rosters.
Mike Schafer, Classic American Railroads: Volume III. Chicago as the goal of the Ottawa line.
Commercial and Financial Chronicle, April 7, 1923. Illinois Power & Light, McKinley as chairman, Clement Studebaker, Jr., as president, the earnings split, and Illinois Traction, Inc.
University of Illinois Board of Trustees. McKinley’s deed of gift, December 11, 1923, endowing a chair in the economics of public utilities.
Electric Railway Journal, 1911. The Peoria–St. Louis sleeping-car schedule. Classic Trains, Summer 2008, on how few interurbans ran sleepers, and the service lasting into 1940.
Trains, “Illinois Terminal Railroad: Road of Many Manifestations.” The Owl, the Illini, the Illmo Limited, and the St. Louis terminal of 1933.
Frank Hicks, “Chicago, Ottawa & Peoria,” Hicks Car Works. The consolidation of December 31, 1922, and the abandonment of May 13, 1934.
National Register of Historic Places. The Illinois Traction Building, Champaign, Joseph Royer, 1913.
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, William Brown McKinley. Born in Petersburg on September 5, 1856. House terms beginning March 4, 1905, and March 4, 1915. Senate term beginning March 4, 1921. Death at Martinsville, Indiana, on December 7, 1926. Buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, Champaign.
The New York Times, November 20, 1954. The stockholder vote, the price of $20,015,635, and the two-thirds requirement.
Illinois Terminal Railroad Company v. United States, 179 Ct. Cl. 1014 (1967). Commission approval on April 2, 1956, consummation on June 15, 1956, the eleven buying railroads, the 2,000 shares, and the intended sale of the McKinley Bridge to the Bi-State Development Agency.
People of the State of Illinois v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 687 F.2d 1047 (7th Cir. 1982). The coordination agreement of June 1, 1980, Finance Docket 29455, filed December 23, 1980, and the Commission’s grant on June 19, 1981.
William D. Middleton, Traction Classics. The horsepower ratings of the Class B, Class C, and Class D motors.

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