This month’s Classic Trains fallen flag feature is the Illinois Central Railroad by George Drury. Of course, to non-railfans, the line is almost certainly best known from Steve Goodman’s melancholy masterpiece “The City of New Orleans“, which was covered by Arlo Guthrie (and was his only top-40 hit). It was certainly the first time I remember hearing the name of the railroad, as the Guthrie version was in regular rotation on Toronto-area radio stations in the early 1970s. If you’re interested in the genesis of the song, there’s a September 2017 Trains article by Craig Sanders, but it’s paywalled unless you’re a subscriber to Kalmbach’s “trains.com Unlimited”. And there’s a grainy live performance by Goodman at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, N.J. in 1976 here.

The IC (nicknamed the “Main Line of Mid-America”) was originally incorporated in 1836 to build a rail connection from Cairo to Galena with a branch to Chicago, but didn’t receive federal support until 1850 and the company was finally granted a charter in 1851. The IC was the first “land grant” railroad in the United States, and prominent Illinois politicians were deeply involved in the railroad (Senator Stephen Douglas and future President Abraham Lincoln). The line was completed in 1856 and the “branch” to Chicago rapidly became the busiest portion of the line. After the Civil War, the IC expanded out of Illinois into Iowa and then by acquisition and consolidation eventually reached Louisville, Kentucky and New Orleans, Louisiana with many branches and secondary lines throughout the eastern half of the Mississippi valley. In the 1880s, the IC also expanded north and west, reaching locations in Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Nebraska by the end of the century.

During the 1880s, the IC came under the control of E.H. Harriman and as a result were one of the railroads that were involved in the union actions that ran from 1911 until 1915. The IC and the other Harriman-controlled railways had existing contracts with the individual trade unions representing workers on each line, but the unions hoped to force the railways to recognize a “System Federation” of the separate unions that would negotiate as a single unit. The IC refused and hired strikebreakers to fill the positions vacated by striking union members — including many African-American men who would not normally have been allowed to work in those positions on southern railways. Sporadic violence in 1911 and 1912 resulted in the deaths of at least 12 men and 30 others were killed in a steam locomotive boiler explosion in San Antonio, Texas. It was generally seen as a failure by mid-1912, but the strike didn’t formally end until 1915. The unions tried again in 1922 in the Great Railroad Strike, which was an even larger attempt by the unions to operate as a single bargaining unit, and another ten people were killed during the conflict but it lasted only a couple of months and failed to achieve its aims.

Although the major portions of the system were in place by World War 1, there were some additional lines added through to the 1960s, merging or acquiring control of lines like the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley, the Gulf & Ship Island, the Chicago, St. Louis & New Orleans, the Alabama & Vicksburg, and the Vicksburg, Shreveport & Pacific. George Drury picks up the story in mid-century:

In the 1950s and early ’60s IC purchased several short lines: former interurban Waterloo, Cedar Falls & Northern (jointly with the Rock Island through a new subsidiary, Waterloo Railroad); Tremont & Gulf in Louisiana; Peabody Short Line, a coal-hauler at East St. Louis, Ill.; and Louisiana Midland.

In 1968 Illinois Central acquired the western third — Nashville to Hopkinsville, Ky. — of the Tennessee Central when that financially ailing line was split among IC, Louisville & Nashville, and Southern.

Illinois Central Gulf

Illinois Central and parallel Gulf, Mobile & Ohio merged on August 10, 1972, to create the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad, a wholly owned subsidiary of Illinois Central Industries. GM&O was a likely merger partner for Illinois Central, as it was a north-south railroad through much the same area as IC. As part of the merger, ICG took over three Mississippi lines: Bonhomie & Hattiesburg Southern; Columbus & Greenville; and Fernwood, Columbia & Gulf.

The north-south lines of ICG’s map resembled an hourglass. Driving across Mississippi or Illinois from east to west, you could encounter as many as eight ICG lines. The former IC system converged at Fulton, Ky., and the former GM&O main line was less than 10 miles west of Fulton at Cayce.

[…]

On Feb. 29, 1988, the railroad changed its name back to Illinois Central, having divested itself of nearly all the former GM&O routes it acquired in 1972, when it added “Gulf” to its name. At the end of 1988 the Whitman Corp. (formerly IC Industries) spun off the railroad, which then dropped “Gulf” from the name, and in August 1989 control of the railroad was gained by the Prospect Group, which formerly controlled spinoff MidSouth Rail.

IC managers eventually turned their eyes west, to the Chicago, Central & Pacific, which it had sold in 1985. It saw CC&P’s route as a source of grain traffic and perhaps a way to get some of the coal moving east from Wyoming. In June 1996 IC purchased the CC&P. The line remains active.

In February 1998 Canadian National Railway agreed to purchase the IC, creating a 19,000-mile railroad. CN absorbed IC in July 1999, and IC lost its own identity within the CN system.