Peoria and Eastern Railway: Map, Timetables, History

Last revised: September 16, 2026

The Peoria & Eastern was the New York Central’s road from Indianapolis to the Illinois River. It never owned a mile of Chicago. It did not need to. Pekin and the Peoria & Pekin Union put the Central into a gateway that already had the Burlington, the Santa Fe, the Toledo, Peoria & Western, and everyone else who used Peoria as a way around the city on the lake. Illinois incorporated the company on February 21, 1890. The next day it took the old Indiana, Bloomington & Western west of Indianapolis at foreclosure and handed operations to the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis—the Big Four. Reporting mark in the NYC years was the parent’s, with P&E on the cabs. The paper company lasted until Conrail on April 1, 1976.

The iron is older than the name. Danville, Urbana, Bloomington & Pekin, 1866. Indianapolis, Bloomington & Western open October 1, 1869. Fourteen Electro-Motive GP7s, 5612–5625, were lettered for the P&E when they left La Grange in 1950. Most of the Illinois main came out under Conrail between 1982 and 1996. What still carries cars is a grain stub and a Peoria terminal, not a railroad from the river to Monument Circle.

Penn Central GP7 5671 with Peoria and Eastern cab emblem at Urbana Illinois January 1972

Penn Central GP7 #5671, wearing the Peoria & Eastern emblem under the cab, at Urbana, Illinois, in January 1972. Roger Puta photo.

On this page: At a glance · I Better Walk · February 21, 1890 · Indianapolis to Pekin · Big Four and New York Central · Passenger trains · GP7s 5612–5625 · Penn Central and Conrail · What remains

At a glance

Item	Detail
Legal name	Peoria & Eastern Railway Company (Illinois)
Headquarters	Operated from the Big Four / New York Central. Shops at Urbana, Illinois
States served	Illinois, Indiana
Genesis	Danville, Urbana, Bloomington & Pekin Railroad, incorporated August 28, 1866
IB&W open	Pekin–Indianapolis, October 1, 1869
P&E incorporated	Corrected articles February 21, 1890 (first filing February 17)
Big Four	Took the property and a perpetual operating agreement February 22, 1890
Route miles	201.548 of road at organization (ICC). Commonly cited plant about 211 miles Pekin–Indianapolis
Principal line	Pekin–Bloomington–Urbana/Champaign–Danville–Crawfordsville–Indianapolis
Gauge	4 feet 8½ inches
NYC lease of parent	Big Four 99-year lease February 1, 1930. P&E paper stayed separate
Assigned diesels	EMD GP7s 5612–5625 (1950). SW7s in the 8900s also wore P&E
Last named passenger	Corn Belt Special, October 1957
Successor	Penn Central February 1, 1968. Conrail April 1, 1976. CSX / Norfolk Southern after June 1, 1999

Mileage at organization is the ICC valuation. February 21–22, 1890, dates follow the valuation and the Coster–Spencer foreclosure deeds. Information compiled September 16, 2026.

I Better Walk

Champaign County wanted a railroad that did not belong to the Illinois Central. Danville wanted a reason to back the new university. The Danville, Urbana, Bloomington & Pekin Railroad was incorporated August 28, 1866, to build from Pekin, on the Illinois River opposite Peoria, across the prairie to the Indiana line. In Indiana the matching company was the Indianapolis, Crawfordsville & Danville. On July 20, 1869, those two became the Indianapolis, Bloomington & Western Railway. The road opened Pekin to Indianapolis on October 1. Crews called it the IB&W, and then they called it I Better Walk.

Urbana got a depot of its own, later shared with the Wabash. Champaign’s house sat near Neil and Randolph. Bloomington and Danville became division towns. The west end used the Peoria & Pekin Union to reach Peoria proper. That was the point: a Midwestern crossroads without a Chicago terminal of its own.

Money did not last. Foreclosure in 1879 produced the Indiana, Bloomington & Western Railway, same initials, new paper. In 1881 that company merged the Ohio, Indiana & Pacific, a partly built Indianapolis–Springfield, Ohio, project, and kept the IB&W name. The eastern extension opened in 1883. The U.S. Circuit Court decreed foreclosure again on February 10, 1887, Springfield, Ohio, to Pekin. Purchasers parked the debris in three state companies—Pekin & Danville, Indiana Railway, Springfield & Western—and put them back together as the Ohio, Indiana & Western Railway that November. The OI&W failed in 1889. Charles H. Coster and Samuel Spencer, Morgan men, bought it at the sale.

February 21, 1890

Illinois articles for the Peoria & Eastern were filed February 17, 1890, and corrected February 21. Capital was $10 million. The object was a railroad already built, Pekin to Indianapolis, about to come off the OI&W mortgage. On February 22 Coster and Spencer split the foreclosure: the line east of Indianapolis, the 1883 Ohio extension, went to the Big Four, which had been formed only the previous June 30. The line west of Indianapolis, Pekin to the Indiana capital, went to the new Peoria & Eastern. The same day the P&E signed the property over to the Big Four to operate. A first-consolidated-mortgage, $10 million of 4 percent bonds due April 1, 1940, was executed to Central Trust of New York and Charles W. Fairbanks.

The ICC later measured 201.548 miles of road in the P&E at organization: 122.782 miles Pekin to the Illinois–Indiana line by deed of February 22, and 78.766 miles state line to Indianapolis by perpetual lease that day and a deed on March 15. Big Four accounts show it operating the P&E, plus about 137 miles of former OI&W east of Indianapolis that it had taken itself, from July 1, 1890. The company on this page is the west half. The Mad River & Lake Erie ancestry of the Sandusky–Springfield country is Ohio’s story, on the Ohio page.

Indianapolis to Pekin

Peoria and Eastern Railway highlighted on 1945 New York Central system map

The Peoria & Eastern on a 1945 New York Central system map. American-Rails.com collection.

West from Indianapolis the railroad ran Crawfordsville, Covington, Danville, Urbana and Champaign, Bloomington, and Pekin. It was a farm-to-factory main: grain, livestock, coal, whiskey at the Pekin distilleries, manufactured goods inbound. Peoria itself was the prize. From the P&PU yard the Central could interchange with the Minneapolis & St. Louis, the Burlington, the Chicago & North Western, the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio, the Chicago & Illinois Midland, the Santa Fe, and the Toledo, Peoria & Western without sending a car through Chicago. That is why Vanderbilt wanted the paper. The 1945 map on this page still draws the P&E as its own red line on the orange Central.

Urbana kept shops. The University of Illinois archives hold the Big Four / P&E shop files. Bloomington was a crew town on both this railroad and the Alton. Danville was where the Egyptian Line and the Chicago, Indiana & Southern touched the same Central family. None of that made the P&E a Chicago railroad. It made it a Peoria railroad with an Indianapolis door.

Big Four and New York Central

Melville Ingalls’s Big Four ran the trains from the first morning. Vanderbilt directors already sat on that board. New York Central stock control of the Big Four tightened about 1905–06. The Interstate Commerce Commission authorized a 99-year lease of the Big Four in July 1929. The Central took the lease on February 1, 1930, the same morning it took the Michigan Central. The Peoria & Eastern corporation was not merged out. It remained a leased Illinois company with its own bonds, its own lettering, and a division on the 1930 Big Four employee map. Penn Central inherited that paper on February 1, 1968.

Passenger trains

Peoria and Eastern Railway public timetable 1945

Peoria & Eastern public timetable, 1945.

This was never a Great Steel Fleet assignment. It was a Peoria–Indianapolis local with sleepers when the traffic paid. In 1942 New York Central still carded the Peoria Special (trains 13/44) and a Day Express / Night Express pair. When Peoria Union Station closed, the remaining train was cut to Pekin and renamed the Corn Belt Special. Last westbound, October 1957—GP7 5625 at the Bloomington depot on October 14 is one of the photographs that date it. A last passenger movement through Urbana is remembered in 1959. After that the P&E was freight, RDCs and name trains staying on other Central corridors.

GP7s 5612–5625

The Central dieselized the Peoria & Eastern with fourteen new GP7s, long-hood forward, class DRS-4C and DRS-4D, outshopped November–December 1950. They were NYC numbers on P&E letterboards. Switchers in the 8900-series SW7s also wore the subsidiary. The assigned GP7s kept showing up on Bloomington manifests into the late 1950s; 5620, 5621, and 5622 on an eastbound, April 26, 1958, is a typical set. By the Penn Central years any Geep might wear a P&E cab emblem at Urbana. 5671 in the photograph at the top of this page is one of those—a 1951 NYC unit, not one of the original fourteen.

Model	Road numbers	Serials	Order	Built	Notes
GP7	5612–5623	12998–13009	6173	11/1950–12/1950	NYC class DRS-4C. Lettered Peoria & Eastern
GP7	5624–5625	13010–13011	6196	12/1950	NYC class DRS-4D. Lettered Peoria & Eastern

Builder dates and serials from the New York Central diesel record. Penn Central classed the block ERS15, still 5600–5625, with 5612–5625 noted as P&E sublettered.

Penn Central and Conrail

A Peoria & Eastern sign with the Penn Central logo at the yard in Urbana, Illinois, January 1972. Roger Puta photo.

Puta’s Urbana photographs of January 1972 are the company at the end of the name: a PC Geep, a P&E herald, a yard that still knew which railroad it had been. Conrail took the assigned lines on April 1, 1976. The P&E corporation went with the rest of the Central’s Midwest paper.

Conrail did not want a Peoria–Indianapolis secondary. Speedway–Clermont, on the Indianapolis end, came out about 1973 under Penn Central. Crawfordsville–Olin (near Covington) was abandoned in March 1982; through freights INPE and PEIN detoured via Terre Haute. Bloomington–Pekin, the old whiskey main, was abandoned effective August 1984 after a December 2, 1982, derailment west of Danvers and a damaged Illinois River crossing Conrail would not rebuild. East Peoria business ran a few more years on Norfolk Southern haulage. Conrail’s last local west of Danville ran in late August 1996. Danville–Urbana came up that fall. Norfolk Southern bought Bloomington–Urbana that August for the grain elevators. The last Conrail train Bloomington–Danville is remembered in 1999, just before the split; NS mothballed what it did not need.

Pioneer Railcorp incorporated a new Peoria & Eastern Railway in 1992 to buy Conrail’s leftovers. The sale did not close. The name on that paper was a reuse, not this company.

What remains

Norfolk Southern still touches the old Bloomington–Urbana piece where grain pays. The Peoria & Pekin Union, now Tazewell & Peoria, still does what it did when the IB&W opened: switch the river. CSX holds Indianapolis and the Big Four Avon Yard; the Cardinal and the former Hoosier State use the old Monon through Crawfordsville, where that road crossed the P&E, not the P&E itself. Between Covington and Pekin the right-of-way is farm, trail, and memory. Urbana’s shop files sit in an archive. The fourteen GP7s went into the Penn Central and Conrail pools and disappeared as Geeps do.

The Peoria & Eastern was a foreclosure company that gave the Central a Peoria gateway and kept its name on the cabs for eighty-six years: Pekin to Indianapolis, February 21, 1890, to April 1, 1976.

Sources

ICC valuation, Peoria & Eastern Railway (WikiProject Trains transcription). Illinois articles February 17 / 21, 1890; OI&W as sole immediate predecessor; Coster and Spencer deeds February 22, 1890; 201.548 miles of road; Big Four operation from July 1, 1890
Madison Rails / Big Four corporate papers. OI&W insolvency 1889; Coster, Spencer, Bliss, Thomas committee; P&E Illinois articles; February 22, 1890, split (east of Indianapolis to Big Four, west to P&E); first-consolidated mortgage April 1, 1940
Indiana, Bloomington & Western chronology: DUB&P August 28, 1866; IB&W July 20, 1869, open October 1, 1869; 1879 reorganization; 1881 Ohio, Indiana & Pacific; 1883 Springfield extension; 1887 foreclosure and OI&W; 1889 sale
ExploreCU / Kara Brehm, “Peoria & Eastern Railroad, 1866.” Urbana depot; last passenger through Urbana 1959
Railroad.net P&E passenger thread (2005). 1942 Peoria Special, Day Express, Night Express; Corn Belt Special after Union Station closed; last run October 1957
The Diesel Shop, New York Central roster (R. Craig). GP7s 5612–5625 lettered Peoria & Eastern
American-Rails.com New York Central and Penn Central diesel rosters. 5612–5625 P&E; SW7s 8904–8906, 8908–8910
Abandoned Rails / David P. Jordan (PeoriaRails). Conrail Crawfordsville–Olin March 1982; Bloomington–Pekin abandonment August 1984; last local west of Danville August 1996; NS Bloomington–Urbana August 1996; 1999 Bloomington–Danville
University of Illinois Archives, Peoria and Eastern Railway (Big Four) Shops
Live American-Rails Big Four, New York Central, Penn Central, Conrail, Peoria & Pekin Union, and Toledo, Peoria & Western pages as linked above

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