Peoria Station

Heading to the downtown library, I made a side trip to the Tazewell & Peoria Railroad's East Peoria Yard and found the Canadian National local, L557, departing for Decatur.    Out of curiosity, I re-watched (and re-counted) Tuesday's Iowa Interstate SIPE, suspecting that IAIS and CN have been exchanging heavy ADM traffic (or at least ADM empties). Below is a list of SIPE-01's train. An asterisk (*) denotes cars which ran through on today's CN local. L = Loads, E = Empties.    1 L SOXX 638299 *2 L MWCX 420341 *3 L ITFX 650139 *4 L ADMX 63144 *5 L ADMX 635570 *6 L ITFX 650060 *7 L ADMX 636011 *8 L ADMX 190032 *9 L ADMX 63638 *10 L ADMX 64207 ---------------------- 11 E UTLX 208928 12 E TCBX 306193 13 E ADMX 54013 14 L ADMX 63027 15 L TILX 649750 ------------------ *16 E ITFX 650153 *17 E TILX 649807 *18 E TILX 636789 *19 E ADMX 64011 *20 E ADMX 636206 *21 E CITX 701596 *22 E ADMX 64368 *23 E ADMX 636032 *24 L ADMX 63614 *25 L ADMX 63994 *26 E SOXX 638305 -----...

Late Wednesday morning, I happened across a Toledo, Peoria & Western Railway "Collier Turn" crawling into the Tazewell & Peoria Railroad's East Peoria Yard. HESR 3485 and TPW 5010 have 53 cars. The train left the last 28 for TZPR and went across the river to deliver 25 grain loads to ADM's South Yard. The scene below was shot just off W. Washington Street in East Peoria.  Seeing the TP&W train was nice but my mission was to catch the Iowa Interstate Railroad's manifest PESI (Peoria IL to Silvis IL). This train's counterpart, SIPE (Silvis IL to Peoria IL) normally arrives East Peoria before sunrise. A new crew is called, and the train leaves town before this second-shift worker is awake! But on this day, a source informed me after 9:00 am that the train was doing its air-test prior to departure, so I headed into East Peoria/Creve Coeur to confirm. The train finally left around noon. I had lunch plans; otherwise I would have recorded the train's ...

Saturday, May 23, 2020 I caught this Cedar Rapids & Iowa City Railway ("Crandic") crew switching the Ingredion wet corn mill at Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Relco-built L4-1500 XD-M #203, paired with S4-143 slug #303, pull and spot cars back and forth across 1st Street SW.  This may seem an odd subject for a blog focusing on Peoria, Illinois, but Cedar Rapids, Iowa produces a massive volume of grain products and a significant portion of this (mostly wet feed from ADM's local facilities, but also some gluten meal and corn screenings) is shipped to Peoria-area barge loadouts year-round.  I've seen this once before, on August 22, 2015. Much has changed. Five years ago, the Crandic was using its older MP15DC's mated with slugs. The plant was still branded for Penford Products, which Ingredion acquired earlier in the year. See below. Ingredion, Inc. is the former Corn Products International. The Cedar Rapids plant manufacturers industrial starch and etha...