Peoria Station

 On April 27, 2012, BNSF Railway “Peoria Local” L-CHI1071 is shown having just coupled to a carbon black load consigned to “Cat Tire” Railroad mergers have eliminated a lot of famous names and paint schemes. But for various reasons, some locomotives and rolling stock get re-lettered to reflect their new owner, yet their pre-merger colors remain virtually unchanged. [...]

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 On April 26, 2012, heavy-duty flat cars laden with wind turbine hubs and nacelles await unloading at the Toledo Peoria & Western Railway’s East Peoria Yard. Construction is about to begin on Gamesa’s Minonk Wind Farm LLC, ownership of which was recently sold to Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. That’s because a 21-car shipment of [...]

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I didn’t see this until just now, but WEEK TV-25 reported last Friday that for the first quarter of 2012, passenger traffic at Peoria Int’l Airport is up 10 percent and cargo volume is up 22 percent. This is not only good news for the local airport, but especially good news for the fact that these [...]

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It had to happen sooner or later. This summer, Delta Connection will reduce its daily Bloomington/Normal to Atlanta roundtrips from four to three. The airline already signaled a capacity shift when it resumed its Peoria-Atlanta route on April 9. But when AirTran Airways ends service to CIRA June 3, fares will rise and passenger numbers [...]

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  At dusk on April 23, 2012, EJ&E 667 leads Canadian National’s “Peoria Local” through Pekin It would be a stretch, but you could say the EJ&E is back! March 31 marked the 32nd anniversary of the court-ordered liquidation of the Chicago Rock Island & Pacific Railroad Co. The day after the Rock Island entered [...]

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  Just out of Peoria, Iowa Interstate’s northbound “Bureau Switcher” nears North San Koty Lane on April 21, 2012 As sort of an update to my previous post, the Iowa Interstate RR received on Saturday another empty Norfolk Southern grain train for loading at Des Moines. It is the fourth since this new movement began. But yesterday’s highlight [...]

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In recent months, the Iowa Interstate Railroad (IAIS) and Norfolk Southern Railway (NS) have increased their use of Peoria as a common interchange point for coal and grain trains, and even a small volume of carload freight. COAL TRAINS – Since December 2010, the NS has delivered coal trains to the IAIS at Peoria (with the Tazewell & [...]

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I don’t know why some Illinois politicians’ plans for a third Chicago area commercial airport would go forward when the head of United Continental Holdings, Inc. (whose United Airlines subsidiary operates its largest hub at Chicago-O’Hare Int’l Airport) tells us it isn’t needed. On second thought, consider that Illinois politicians are the project’s most enthusiastic backers. Per this [...]

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In Tuesday’s Journal Star, a curious, 95-word blurb appeared on Page C-2 entitled, “Biorefinery set for Peoria.” I believe it only appeared in the print edition. The short article says a company named Integrated Biorefining Corp. has announced plans to build “an advanced biofuels platform” in Peoria. A company person named Randy Deemie says he [...]

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Bloomington-Normal’s Central Illinois Regional Airport’s now decade old, nine-gate terminal has never come close to handling its million-passengers-a-year design capacity. The reason comes down to one word: Peoria. If history had inverted Bloomington-Normal’s and Peoria’s metro populations (170,000 and 379,000, respectively), CIRA would likely be the only commercial airport in the region. But centrally-located Bloomington-Normal [...]

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