It's now been 45 years since the Illinois Railway Museum moved to Union in 1964. Deciding on a permanent location was the most important and irreversible decision the Museum has ever taken. Several alternatives were considered, and it's reassuring to be able to say from hindsight that they made the right choice. Most of us will find it hard to imagine IRM being located anywhere else, but there were several intriguing possibilities. (
This is not how it happened, by the way!)
For those who came in late: when the Illinois Electric Railway Museum was founded in 1953, the first cars were stored on the grounds of the Chicago Hardware Foundry in North Chicago. The owner was a railfan, and sympathetic to the goals of the fledgling group, so for the first ten years or so this provided an inexpensive and reasonably convenient storage location.
But it quickly became obvious, as the Museum's collection expanded, that the North Chicago site would be completely inadequate as a permanent home. It was nearly inaccessible to visitors, and offered no possibilities for further expansion, indoor storage, or regular operation of the equipment. Several possible permanent sites were considered, and eventually small committees were formed to investigate at least the most promising candidates. (The committee chairmen for the four sites listed below were, in order, Larry Goerges, Jack Gervais, Dave Shore, and Walter Murphy.)
CA&E BATAVIA BRANCH
This route is now part of the Prairie Path system, so you can easily explore it on foot or bicycle. It starts in Batavia at Wilson Street on the east side of the Fox River and heads south. About a mile south of town it bends away from the river and winds across country towards Batavia Junction. In 1958, when the toll road was constructed, this branch was already out of service, so the highway authority bought several hundred feet of the right-of-way, tore up the track, and built the road at grade level, thus avoiding the expense of a bridge or underpass. As a result, most of the branch was isolated from the rest of the world. The tracks were still in place, and the route is somewhat more scenic than our present location, so it was an attractive possibility.
However, IRM would have needed a railroad interchange. When the branch was built in 1902, there was an interchange track with the Burlington's old main line. This interchange allowed coal cars to be delivered to the road's power plant south of Batavia. The interchange track left the Batavia branch where it curved away from the river, and continued straight south. Bridge abutments where it crossed a small creek are still in place, but even in 1964 this track was long gone. The land there now belongs to the park district, and I don't know whether IRM would have been able to rebuild the interchange. The only other alternative would be to extend the track at the south end along the north side of the toll road a mile or so to the EJ&E. That's essentially what the bicycle path does now, but putting in a railroad track would be very expensive and perhaps impossible.
Another drawback would have been the steep grade up away from the river, most of which is on a curve. This was no problem for the interurban cars, but would probably limit our steam or Diesel-powered passenger trains. Also, there are several grade crossings along the route, two of them with major highways. The state has built a large bridge over Kirk Road so bicycle and foot traffic on the path doesn't have to cross this busy four-lane highway. This would have been a real problem for our railroad.
A view from the new bridge over Kirk Road of the Batavia branch. This might have become IRM's main line.
Most importantly, the route is now almost completely surrounded by suburban housing developments. In 1964, this might have been hard to imagine. The Museum would find it impossible to expand, and we would probably be in constant difficulties with the neighbors. This is even becoming a problem at Union! While Batavia is closer and more accessible to Chicago, if the Museum had located there, by now we'd probably be wondering how to escape.
THE PLAINFIELD QUARRY TRACK
Another possibility was a branch off the EJ&E near Joliet that was owned by the Material Service Corp. The EJ&E branch heads north from Joliet along the west bank of the Des Plaines River. Just south of Lewis University in Lockport, a track headed pretty much straight west to serve several quarries near Plainfield. By 1964 these quarries had stopped shipping by rail, and the branch was available.
Like the Batavia line, this route is also now built up with subdivisions. The quarries are occupied by a couple of rod and gun clubs. Also like the Batavia branch, there was a steep grade with sharp curves where the line left the river; you can still see it in the woods near the Lewis campus. Parts of the right-of-way have been obliterated, and you cannot walk along any of it as far as I know. And trespassing on the property of a gun club doesn't seem like such a hot idea. I-55 still has a bridge over the path of the long-vanished tracks, so we can imagine some publicity value in running trains right under the busy expressway. Again, it's closer to Chicago than Union is, but it would have the same problems as the Batavia site with expansion, busy grade crossings, and complaints from neighbors.
The quarry track route is now occupied by high-tension lines and surrounded by houses, as seen here from the I-55 bridge. Photo by Margaret Miller.Maybe you thought house-hunting was a headache. Just wait, it gets worse.
EAST TROY, WISCONSIN
Another site that was actually considered was East Troy, Wisconsin. This is a small town located about 50 miles due north of Union. (Presumably the Illinois Railway Museum would have had to change its name if it moved out of state!)
East Troy was the end of a branch of the great Milwaukee Electric system. In 1939, when the branch was going to be abandoned, several industries in East Troy would have lost their railroad access. So the Village of East Troy bought about seven miles of line to the nearest railroad interchange at Mukwonago. Thereafter, the tracks were owned and operated by the village. They bought a couple of pieces of work equipment from the interurban line and continued to use electric power for freight service.
For Museum use, the plan would have been for IRM to locate along the right-of-way and run its trains on the branch on weekends, while the village would continue to use the track for freight trains on weekdays. The big problem here is that the Museum would not own the main line it operated on, and would be at the village's mercy. There was no way to insure that the track would be maintained to the Museum's standards. Although the line was originally built for high-speed interurban service, it had deteriorated. The Village of East Troy only needed to move a few freight cars each day, and if speeds were limited to 5 MPH, so what? Extended discussions with the village took place, but no agreement could be reached. Fortunately, IRM decided not to act on this option.
On a visit to East Troy in 1980, North Shore car 763 was in service at Phantom Lake with a phantom crew. The pole was up, the car was open, but nobody was home. I remember wishing I had brought some handles, and never did figure out where the crew was.
However, a couple of years later a different group did take this route. In 1967, the Mid-Continent Railway Museum decided to split up into separate steam and electric groups. The steam railroad group stayed at North Freedom, Wisconsin, where they are still very active; the electric group moved to East Troy. There they operated on the village's line for many years. But there seems to have been continual friction between the museum group and the city, and about 1985 this group was forced off the railroad. The collection of electric cars was embargoed in the storage barn they had built. (About half the collection was purchased by IRM and is now at Union.) Operations at East Troy were later taken over by a different group, which is still in business as the East Troy Electric Railroad. In 1995, they were able to purchase the line from the village and operate it as their own.
The East Troy site now seems to work well for the ETER, which has a collection of about 35 electric cars. But it probably wouldn't work for a collection more than ten times that size, and IRM probably could not have found a sufficiently large parcel for its campus.
OTHER SITES
A few other branch lines were briefly looked at and rejected for various reasons. While IRM was investigating one of them, the McHenry County Clerk mentioned that they had an abandoned right-of-way they wanted to get rid of, since no taxes were being paid on it. This parcel was located near a small town called Union.
UNION
Between Union and Huntley there was a continuous section of right-of-way from the Elgin and Belvidere, an interurban line abandoned in 1930. Unlike the other possibilities we've mentioned, there was no track on this route. The main attraction of this location seems to have been that it was
cheap. It appeared that the Museum could acquire title to the land merely by paying back taxes, which of course were in arrears because the railroad company had disappeared. The Museum started paying taxes on the line as a backup contingency, and when they were unable to afford any of the other sites which already had track, Union became the permanent location.
Museum President Herb Hansen stands along IRM's right-of-way in this view by Julie Johnson looking west at Seeman Road, where Johnson siding is now; here is another, but I'm not sure where this is.The advantages of this site included being a reasonably convenient location: about an hour's drive from Chicago, but far from suburban development (at least in 1964). It's parallel to an active railroad line, so interchange is no problem, and our main line, of course, has no difficult grades or curves. The presence of an active railroad also helps insulate us from complaints about being a nuisance. There was no problem (other than money!) in acquiring plenty of land along the right-of-way for Museum expansion.
Unfortunately, the location turned out not to be as cheap as first thought. Due to bad legal advice, not all of the right-of-way was acquired, and the Museum had to pay substantial amounts to regain possession of a couple of "missing links." However, this expense was deferred until later, when the Museum was more firmly established and had greater financial resources.
Now that the missing link problem is behind us, the Museum has been able to focus on acquiring buffer parcels around its campus. Suburban development is getting closer than anyone would have predicted in 1964. The area is prone to flooding, but our Buildings and Grounds department has been hard at work installing storm sewers and retention ponds to alleviate this. It's always easy in hindsight to say "They shoulda done this, they shoulda done that." At least in this case, given the available choices, there's little doubt they made the correct choice.
This is North Texas Traction car #25, which was restored by volunteers (including Mr. Holding) and is now on display in Fort Worth.
