Peoria Station

PEORIA – When I attended Illinois Central College after graduating from high school in 1993, I made sure I took a route which gave me the best view of the area’s rail operations. No, it wasn’t the fastest way to go from the Norwood area off Farmington Road to the ICC campus, but I learned a lot about P&PU and TP&W train operations, and also managed to catch Burlington Northern, Chicago & North Western, Conrail and Norfolk Southern trains as well.

Perhaps not coincidentally, I also happened across the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission profile of the Peoria Gatway that summer, which was at the time 16 years old. Much had changed in local railroading between 1977 and 1993, mostly for worse, but railroads had become a solvent industry, and were capturing new business.

As promised, below is a list of customers served by the Peoria  & Pekin Union Railway in 1993:

(1) located on the Peoria, Peoria Heights & Western Railroad.
(2) Located on track purchased from Conrail.

Since 1982, P&PU had gained several new customers, namely those located on the City-owned Peoria, Peoria Heights & Western Railroad, and on track owned by Conrail, which that carrier sold to P&PU when it ended its Pekin switching operations. Increased business came when the P&PU set up its “Road-n-Rail Storage & Consolidation” facility in Creve Ceour. Some Caterpillar machinery assembled at East Peoria, and also products from Aurora and Decatur were shipments to P&PU’s facility and stored then prepared for shipment to dealers from there.  The facility could consolidate two different peices of machinery (from different plants) on a single flat car, thanks to a new fleet of 68′ flat cars.

Business at the Norfolk Southern Intermodal Terminal was good, and would get busier, hence the decision to use more efficient double stack container cars by 1994. Caterpillar tractor parts and diesel engines constituted the bulk of business handled at this facility, but ADM’s Act Distilling Company and others contributed as well.

The mid-1990’s were good for P&PU: Seneca Petroleum constructed a siding on P&PU property in Peoria to received aggregate for a nearby hot mix asphalt plant, and ADM began receiving almost daily unit grain trains from the Iowa Interstate Railroad, delivered by P&PU. Midwest Grain Products of Illinois tripled both alcohol- and protein and starch-making facilities. A plastics transloading operation was set up at the East Peoria Yard in 1996 to serve off-line ALCOA Building Products’ Princeville plant.

In the fall of 1995, Burlington Northern and Norfolk Southern shifted a large amount of interchange business via Peoria and two years later, Union Pacific would discontinue handling merchandise traffic south of Peoria on its former Chicago & North Western line. Traffic instead was routed over shortline Illinois & Midland, with interchange taking place at P&PU’s East Peoria Yard. Other railroads began using Peoria as a gateway again.  

All of this new business came at a time when a staple of P&PU business – hosting unit coal trains – had largely disappeared (albeit temporarily).

Further growth came as the Chicago Board of Trade decided to shift delivery of contract grains away from eastern ports such as Toledo, Ohio to Illinois River terminals. This shift led to investment in new and expanded grain-handling facilities on the P&PU in 1996-1997: ADM Growmark expanded track capacity at its Creve Coeur elevator and purchased the Central Illinois Dock Company property and converted it into a rail- and truck-to-barge transfer facility. Cargo Carriers expanded its railcar handling capacity from 8 to 75 in 1997, thus enabling grain and potash trains to be comsigned to that facility.

The good times would not last, however, as Norfolk Southern gained an alternative gateway in Streator when it took control of 58% of Conrail trackage in 1999. Other carriers would also shift traffic away from Peoria, a city which once again was left with mainly originating and terminating rail freight business. Four decades of handling intermodal business came to an end as well.

Cheap diesel fuel and a slowing economy by the year 2000 significantly decreased business on P&PU, however, as the price per barrel of oil began to spike that same year, rail traffic began to recover. I will post a list of customers gained and lost by P&PU during the deregulated era (October 1980 – present) as well as a current list of customers served in the next, and final installment of this series.

- David P. Jordan