Peoria Station

Bloomington-Normal's Central Illinois Regional Airport is again on a growth track, and is gaining another new destination. The Pantagraph reported Tuesday that CIRA handled 421,519 passengers in 2019. That's a 15.6 increase over 2018 when 364,482 passengers when through the facility's gates. The rise in traffic was attributed to Low Cost Carrier service by Allegiant Air and Frontier Airlines. The former has just announced seasonal nonstops from CIRA to Destin/Fort Walton Beach from June 4 to August 16. Flights will operate Sundays and Thursdays.  - David P. Jordan

I got lucky Tuesday. BNSF Railway's Peoria Subdivision is now void of active customers save for two industries on Galesburg's east side. Gates Corp. manufacturers rubber at a plant opened in 1961 and receives carbon black by rail on a regular basis. Progress Rail Services, which purchased Galesburg Iron & Metal Co. about 2008 and had a new spur built on its property ten years ago, receives retired rolling stock for dismantling.  While in the Galesburg area yesterday, I happened to catch a BNSF local job switching Gates Corp's spur east of town with snoot nose SD40-2 1905 and TEBC6 54 (a slug built by RELCO from an SD9). The first twelve cars were for Progress Rail Services' nearby facility (where retired rolling stock goes to die) and the three carbon black cars were switched to or from Gates Corp.  Other industries on this line in recent years were Caterpillar's "tire plant" in Peoria, which closed in 2017; the rarely-served Caterp