The first land grant railroad The IC was one of the oldest
Class I railroads in the United States. The company was incorporated by the
Illinois General Assembly on January 16, 1836. Within a few months Rep.
Zadok Casey (D-Illinois) introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives authorizing a
land grant to the company to construct a line from the mouth of the Ohio River to
Chicago and on to
Galena. Federal support, however, was not approved until 1850, when U.S. President
Millard Fillmore signed a land grant for the construction of the railroad. The Illinois Central was the first land-grant railroad in the United States. The Illinois Central was chartered by the Illinois General Assembly on February 10, 1851. Senator
Stephen A. Douglas and later President
Abraham Lincoln were both Illinois Central men who lobbied for it. Douglas owned land near the terminal in Chicago. Lincoln was a lawyer for the railroad. Illinois legislators appointed
Samuel D. Lockwood, recently retired from the
Illinois Supreme Court (who may have given both lawyers the oral examination before admitting them to the Illinois bar), as a trustee on the new railroad's board to guard the public's interest. Lockwood, who would serve more than two decades until his death, had overseen federal land monies shortly after Illinois' statehood, then helped oversee early construction of the recently completed
Illinois and Michigan Canal.
Early operations Upon its completion in 1856, the IC was the longest railroad in the world. Its main line went from
Cairo, Illinois, at the southern tip of the state, to
Galena, in the northwest corner. A branch line went from
Centralia (named for the railroad), to the rapidly growing city of
Chicago. In Chicago, its tracks were laid along the shore of
Lake Michigan and on an offshore causeway downtown, but land-filling and natural deposition have moved the present-day shore to the east. Track from Centralia north to Freeport would be abandoned in the 1980s, as traffic to Galena was routed via Chicago. During the Civil War Chicago became the supply base for the Western armies. General
Ulysses S Grant took his forces on the Illinois Central—his supply line—down to Cairo. He then he marched south to seize control of Kentucky and Tennessee on his way to victories at
Shiloh,
Vicksburg, and
Chattanooga. For the entire war, the Illinois Central carried 626,000 soldiers back and forth for a total of 128,000,000 passenger miles of military service, for which the War Department paid $1.7 million, plus another $.5 million to move freight. In 1867, the Illinois Central extended its track into
Iowa. During the 1870s and 1880s, the IC acquired and expanded railroads in the southern United States. IC lines crisscrossed the state of
Mississippi and went as far south as
New Orleans, Louisiana, and east to
Louisville, Kentucky. In the 1880s, northern lines were built to
Dodgeville, Wisconsin;
Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and
Omaha, Nebraska. Further expansion continued into the early twentieth century. The Illinois Central, and the other "Harriman lines" owned by
E.H. Harriman by the twentieth century, became the target of the
Illinois Central shopmen's strike of 1911. Although marked by violence and sabotage in the southern, midwestern, and western states, the strike was effectively over in a few months. The railroads simply hired replacements, among them African-American strikebreakers, and withstood diminishing union pressure. The strike was eventually called off in 1915. The totals above do not include the Waterloo RR, Batesville Southwestern, Peabody Short Line or CofG and its subsidiaries. On December 31, 1925, IC/Y&MV/G&SI operated 6,562 route-miles on 11,030 miles of track; A&V and VS&P added 330 route-miles and 491 track-miles. At the end of 1970, IC operated 6,761 miles of road and 11,159 of track. In 1960, the railroad retired its last steam locomotive,
2-8-2 Mikado #1518. On August 31, 1962, the railroad was incorporated as Illinois Central Industries, Inc. ICI acquired Abex Corporation (formerly American Brake Shoe and Foundry Co.) in 1968.
Illinois Central Gulf Railroad (1972–1988) plate On August 10, 1972, the Illinois Central Railroad merged with the
Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad to form the
Illinois Central Gulf Railroad . October 30 of that year saw the
Illinois Central Gulf commuter rail crash, the company's deadliest. At the end of 1980, ICG operated 8,366 miles of railroad on 13,532 miles of track; that year it reported 33,276 million ton-miles of revenue freight and 323 million passenger-miles. Later in that decade, the railroad spun off most of its east–west lines and many of its redundant north–south lines, including much of the former GM&O. Most of these lines were bought by other railroads, including entirely new railroads such as the
Chicago, Missouri and Western Railway;
Paducah and Louisville Railway;
Chicago Central and Pacific Railroad; and
MidSouth Rail Corporation. In 1988, the railroad's parent company, IC Industries, spun off its remaining rail assets and changed its name to Whitman Corporation. On February 29, 1988, the newly separated ICG dropped the "Gulf" from its name and again became the Illinois Central Railroad.
Canadian National Railway (1998–present) On February 11, 1998, the IC was purchased for about $2.4 billion in cash and shares by
Canadian National Railway (CN). Integration of operations began July 1, 1999. In November 2020, as part of celebrations for the 25th anniversary of CN's privatization, the company unveiled a series of locomotives repainted in the schemes of the company's predecessor and subsidiary railroads.
GE ET44AC No. 3008, which was repainted in the black livery of IC, along with the logos of that company. ==Locomotives==