Peoria Station

This was starting to look bad when Hitchcock Scrap Yard began questioning information BNSF provided on the Dunfermline-Canton trackage. Hitchcock requested one last extension to May 17 (approved bythe STB two days earlier) but has failed to make the required Offer of Financial Assistance (OFA). So the STB has now terminated the OFA process, issued a Notice [...]

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Looking northeast from Edmund Street on May 23, 2013 An old railroad yard with origins going back to 1880 is in its last days. BNSF Railway’s “Uptown Yard” has been out of service since 2005. The tracks have since become choked with vegetation. Archer Daniels Midland acquired at least a part of the old property [...]

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Line pipe for Enbridge Ltd’s Flanagan South Pipeline is starting to flood the Toledo Peoria & Western Railway’s East Peoria Yard. At least 52 loads (11 pipes on each) arrived Thursday (May 16) morning. Video above shows TP&W yard job shoving a cut toward the unloading area late Friday afternoon. Photo below shows the large [...]

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I almost always turn my Radio Shack scanner on when I’m driving, in case of interesting train action. Shortly after 4:00 this afternoon, I heard radio chatter between the Union Pacific’s Peoria Sub dispatcher and a coal train bound for Midwest Generation LLC’s Powerton Generating Station. The train crew had just received a track warrant [...]

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BNSF Railway has responded to Hitchcock Scrap Yard’s request for more time to consider making an offer for a portion of trackage between Dunfermline and Canton. BNSF Railway Company (“BNSF”) hereby responds to the request by Hitchcock Scrap Yard, Inc. (“Hitchcock”) to extend the time period for making an Offer of Financial Assistance (“OFA”) to [...]

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A BNSF coal train snakes its way through Pekin June 20, 2008 on Illinois & Midland Railroad tracks. This is the approximate location of Wednesday evening’s minor derailment. A BNSF coal train running on the Illinois & Midland Railroad in Pekin has derailed. A commenter on the WEEK TV-25 website noted this evening’s derailment occurred by the [...]

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Revision (May 12, 2013): More pipe loads arrived East Peoria Sunday afternoon, but were not received from Norfolk Southern. SEE BELOW I reported back in December that Enbridge Ltd. had begun shipping 80′ steel pipe from Evraz North America’s Regina, Saskatchewan mill to the Illinois & Midland Railroad’s Quiver Yard, located just northeast of Havana. I [...]

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Nestle USA/Libby’s Morton pumpkin cannery no longer has rail access. Track inside the plant shipping area was removed within the past few weeks.  It appears more of the track seen in the photo above will be removed shortly. This is a sad development, but hardly surprising. Nestle hadn’t loaded any boxcars during the regular late-summer/fall [...]

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Hitchcock Scrap Yard has filed with the Surface Transportation Board a request for an extension of time regarding the case entitled BNSF RAILWAY COMPANY–ABANDONMENT EXEMPTION–IN FULTON COUNTY, ILL. The document at the link has not been attached. I will update as soon as more information becomes available. Update (May 7, 2013): The letter with Hitchock Scrap Yard’s [...]

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To the best of my knowledge, the Peoria & Pekin Union Railway never published its own freight train schedules, at least not for the public. Only passenger trains, including those of owner and tenant lines, appeared in P&PU public timetables. But there is one source that helped me formulate an accurate (or somewhat accurate) table [...]

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