Peoria Station

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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Peoria area rail lines are poised to resume normal operations by mid-week. A BNSF service advisory notes that as of April 25, its Peoria Subdivision is out of service between Milepost 36 (two miles west fo Edwards) and Milepost 47.6 (just south of Harmon Highway). But the company appears to have finished repairs. The eastbound “Peoria Local,” [...]

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If rail passenger service to Peoria is feasible, it would involve same-train service to and from Union Station in Chicago. But the Amtrak/IDOT study initiated in 2006 but not completed until 2011 called for a East Peoria-Normal rail shuttle to connect passengers with existing Amtrak service. I’ve already explained why this is a bad idea. Unfortunately, [...]

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