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<DIV>They called it the Mainline of Mid America, that 923 mile stretch of high iron extending from downtown Chicago
to New Orleans. The Illinois Central Railroad gained fame for its fleet of fine passenger trains. Who
could forget such extra fine streamliners as the Panama Limited, City of New Orleans, City of Miami,Green Diamond,
and Shawnee, to name a few? Illinois Central had the trains to make good on a promise of friendly,folksy
service to the travelling and shipping public. While the Illinois Central Railroad gained a
bit of notoriety in 1900 with the famous collision between two trains at Vaughan, MS that sent
Casey Jones to the Promised Land,,the railroad went about its business of developing its freight and passenger services
into the finest in the area served by the Illinois Central. No other railroad assembled a fleet of diesel locomotives
quite like that of the Illinois Central Railroad. Just look at the products of its Paducah Shops rebuild program of rebuilding
EMD GP7 and GP9 road switchers into what the railroad (and Conrail) called GP8 and GP10 models. Then there was the
electrified lakeshore suburban commuter service,, which was electrified in 1926 and proudly billed by the railroad
as Chicago's finest transportation. One ride on these suburban trains, be they heavyweight cars or the new Highliner
bilevels coming on line in 1972, annd one could see why the railroad was so proud of its commuter
service. That friendly,folksy way of conducting business extended to this service as well.</DIV>
MAJOR TERMINALS- Illinois has major freight terminals in Chicago (Markham Yard),Memphis,New Orleans. Smaller yards throughout
the system support the major terminals. Freight traffic handled on the Illinois Central includes: grain and coal, food and
consumer products, forest products, petrochemicals,and automotive, to name a few ofthe commodities that make up the railroad's
freight traffic mix.Current Amtrak passenger operations on the Mainline of Mid America include the Chicago to New Orleans,
City of New Orleans and the Shawnee between Chicago and Carbondale. The electric suburban commuter service, long a hallmark
of the railroad's Chicago area operations, has since been spunt off to METRA, the organization that has assumed responsibility
for all Chicago area commuter operations.
Even though it has been part of the Canadian National Railway system since 1999, the Illinois Central Railroad still has
a substantial fleet of diesels in its own livery.
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