Nov 17, 2013

The Rock Island Line is a Mighty Fine Line





  1. Johnny Cash-Rock Island Line - YouTube

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX1BPItDcDo‎

    25 Sep 2010 - Uploaded by ILOveOldies
    Down the Rock Island Line she's a mightyroad. The rock Island Line it's a road to ride. The rock island line it's a mighty good road. Well if you  ...

  2. Rock Island Line - Johnny Cash - YouTube

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFY8tmeLCSE‎

    6 May 2012 - Uploaded by BCoMusic
    Rock Island Line it's a mighty good road. Well if you ride you got to ride it like you finally get your ticket. At the station for the Rock Island Line

  3. Lonnie Donegan - Rock Island Line 1978 - YouTube

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ3JnaRssfg‎

    19 Nov 2012 - Uploaded by fritz51300
    Lonnie Donegan - Rock Island Line 1978 Now, this here's the story ... Now, the Rock Island line is a railroad line ... She's a mighty good road

  4. Bobby Darin - Rock Island Line (Lyrics On-Screen and in Description) - YouTube

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6L7nSmZeME‎

    21 Dec 2012 - Uploaded by Zepikness
    Lyrics: [talking] Now this here's a story about theRock Island Line. The Rock Island Line, ...Rock Island Line, it's a mighty fine road. And if you  ...

  5. This Was The Rock Island Railroad - YouTube

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2FbCEaUfMw‎

    2 Mar 2009 - Uploaded by GreenFrogVideos
    The Rock Island Line was a mighty fine line. The musical ditty aside, there was something special about the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific  ...

  6. Johnny Cash - Rock Island Line Live - YouTube

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cdmxD6Kbtg‎

    19 Feb 2013 - Uploaded by MrFabioDiamante
    The Rock Island Line is a mighty good road. If you want to ride you gotta ride it like you find it. Get your ticket at the station for the Rock Island ...

  7. The Beatles - Rock Island Line - YouTube

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgk9FxU7JD0‎

    14 Apr 2013 - Uploaded by Listen To This
    The song is ostensibly about the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. The chorus to the old song reads: The Rock Island Line is a mighty  ...

From Wikapedia


In 1847 the Rock Island & La Salle Railroad Company was chartered to build between Rock Island, Illinois, on the Mississippi River, and La Salle, where connections would be made with the Illinois and Michigan Canal to Chicago. Contractor Henry Farnam persuaded the organizers to extend the railroad as far as Chicago to connect with other railroads. The charter was so amended, and the railroad was renamed the Chicago & Rock Island (C&RI). Construction began on October 1851. The first train ran southwest from Chicago to Joliet, 40 miles, on October 10, 1852 powered by 4-4-0 Rocket.[1][2]
The line was opened to Rock Island on February 22, 1854, and the contractors turned it over to the company in July of that year. By then the railroad had an agreement with the Northern Indiana Railroad (later part of the New York Central Railroad) for joint terminal facilities in Chicago; a branch from Bureau, Illinois, south to Peoria was nearly complete (it was opened in November 1854); and the Mississippi & Missouri Railroad (M&M) had been chartered in Iowa to build a railroad from Davenport, across the Mississippi River from Rock Island, toCouncil Bluffs, with branches south through Muscatine and north through Cedar Rapids.[1]
Money to finance construction of the M&M was hard to come by. BothIowa City, then the state capital, and Muscatine wanted the railroad first. Iowa City offered a bonus if a train arrived by midnight, December 31, 1855. Muscatine got its railroad first, on November 20, 1855, but a frozen locomotive was pushed over hastily laid and barely spiked rails into Iowa City as church bells rang in the New Year, securing the bonus and providing the perfect scenario for a multitude of grade-B novels and movies.[1]
A bridge across the Mississippi was necessary to connect the C&RI and M&M. The Mississippi had not yet been spanned, and the immediate reaction to the proposed railroad bridge was that it would be a hazard to navigation. However, the bridge was officially opened on April 21, 1856. On the evening on May the steamboat Effie Afton, which usually plied the New Orleans-Louisville run, cleared the open draw span and veered aside, turned around, rammed one of the piers, then suddenly and suspiciously burst into flames. The case of the bridge soon became one of railroad advocates versus steamboat advocates. The latter felt that even a single bridge would set an unfortunate precedent and soon there would be bridges every 40 or 50 miles along the length of the river.[1] The railroad's case, argued by Abraham Lincoln, stated that not only was the steamboat at fault in striking the bridge but that bridges across navigable rivers were to the advantage of the country.[3] The case went one way and the other is successive courts, but in 1866 the U.S. Supreme Court held for the railroad. Several other railroads immediately applied to bridge the Mississippi at other locations.[1]

$700 Bond receipt 1866
The M&M, far behind its construction schedule, was sold to the newly incorporated Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad on July 9, 1866. On August 20 that company consolidated with the C&RI to form the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad.[2] The line reached Des Moines a year later and arrived at Council Bluffs on May 11, 1869 — one day after completion of the Union Pacific (UP) and Central Pacific railroads from Council Bluffs to the West Coast. The Rock Island was not the first railroad into Council Bluffs; the Cedar Rapids & Missouri River Railroad(later part of the Chicago and North Western Railway [C&NW]) had reached there more than two years earlier and established ties with UP.[1]
In the 1870s the Rock Island extended its Muscatine line southwest across Iowa and northwestern Missouri to Leavenworth, Kansas, and later negotiated trackage rights over the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroadfrom Cameron, Missouri to Kansas City. Also during the 1870s, the railroad acquired several "firsts" — the first dining cars and Jesse James's first train holdup. The 1880s saw some corporate simplification, the acquisition of the Keokuk & Des Moines Railroad and the St Joseph & Iowa Railroad, and control of the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern Railway (BCR&N), which had a line from Burlington, Iowa, through Cedar Rapids and Cedar Falls to Plymouth, near Mason City, with a branch through Iowa Falls and Estherville to Watertown, South Dakota. The BCR&N later acquired lines west out of Davenport and Clinton, Iowa, and lines to Decorah, Iowa, Worthington, Minnesota, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.[1]
On December 5, 1883, the Rock Island made a tripartite agreement with UP and the Milwaukee Road for interchange at Omaha, Nebraska. The C&NW, which had been UP's preferred connection, quickly became a party to the agreement, as did the Wabash Railroad, St Louis & Pacific (a predecessor of the Wabash). The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad in Nebraska (part of the BCR&N) protested the agreement. UP suddenly found itself in financial difficulties, and Rock Island decided to build its own extensions rather than rely on interchange traffic with UP. Two years later the Chicago, Kansas & Nebraska Railroad (CK&N) was chartered to build from St Joseph andAtchison southwest across Kansas to Wichita, and another railroad of the same name was incorporated in Nebraska to build from the southeast tip of the state to Kearney. The two companies merged and were leased to the St Joseph & Iowa Railroad, a subsidiary of the Rock Island. A charter was approved for the extension of the southwest line from Wichita to Galveston, Texas, and from Liberal, Kansas, to El Paso, Texas. By the end of 1887 rails reached Caldwell, on the southern border of Kansas, and in February 1888 they reached Liberal. A year later the Rock Island had built west across northern Kansas andColorado to Colorado Springs. Rock Island made arrangements to useDenver & Rio Grande Western Railroad track north of Denver and south to Pueblo; in 1899 Rock Island began using UP tracks from Limon, Colorado to Denver.[1]
Rock Island's Chicago-Colorado route via St Joseph was circuitous. To assemble a route through Omaha, the Rock Island constructed a line from Omaha to Lincoln and in 1890 traded McPherson-Hutchinson, Kansas trackage rights to UP for trackage rights on UP between Lincoln and Beatrice and use of UP's Missouri River bridge between Council Bluffs and Omaha. The Rock Island began Chicago-Colorado service via Omaha on August 16, 1891, and later built its own line west of Lincoln. Also in 1891, the Rock Island acquired the CK&N. Subsidiary Chicago, Rock Island & Texas reached Fort Worth in 1893.[1]

20th century[edit]

In 1901, control of the Rock Island was taken over by the Reid-Moore syndicate: Daniel G. Reed, William H. Moore, his brother James H. Moore, and William Leeds, men who had put together the National Biscuit, Diamond Match, and American Can companies. The railroad continued to burgeon. It acquired the Choctaw, Oklahoma & Gulf Railroad, (CO&G) a line from Memphis, Tennessee, through Little Rock, Arkansas, and Oklahoma City to Elk City in western Oklahoma, and the 70 mi (110 km) St. Louis, Kansas City & Colorado Railroad. Expansion then continued at breathtaking speed:
At the same time the controlling syndicate, which now included B. F. Yoakum, was busy acquiring control of the Chicago & Alton Railroad, the Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad, the Toledo, St. Louis & Western Railroad, and the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway (SLSF) through holding companies and exchanges of stock. By 1909, though, the interest due on SLSF bonds far exceeded dividends received on SLSF stock — none. B. F. Yoakum bought Rock Island's SLSF stock at a considerable loss to the Rock Island.[1]
The Rock Island created a Twin Cities-Kansas City route in 1913 by leasing the St. Paul & Kansas City Short Line Railroad and building a line between Allerton and Carlisle, Iowa, several miles south of Des Moines. In 1914 red ink caused by debt interest appeared on Rock Island's ledgers, and on April 20, 1915, the railroad entered receivership. On June 22, 1917, Rock Island was out of receivership and back in the hands of its stockholders. Shortly afterward the United States Railroad Administration took over management for the duration of World War I.[1]
New management took over in the 1920s and placed considerable emphasis on paying stock dividends to the detriment of maintaining the property. Edward N. Brown, chairman of the board of the SLSF, began to buy Rock Island stock with the thought of using dividends to bolster the SLSF's situation. Soon Brown was chairman of Rock Island's executive committee. In 1927, Rock Island declared a stock dividend of 5%; in 1928, 6% and in 1929, 7% — even though Rock Island's annual interest on its debt was nearly $14 million. In 1930 Brown began to secretly acquire SLSF stock for the Rock Island. Revenue dropped as the Great Depression deepened. Then Rock Island's territory was struck with wheat crop failures and the effects of the Dust Bowl. The Rock Island declared bankruptcy on June 7, 1933.[1]
In the early 1950s, the Rock Island acquired some forty miles of theWichita Falls and Southern Railroad, one of the Frank Kell and Joseph A. Kemp properties between Graham in Young County, Texas, and a point south of Breckenridge in Stephens County, Texas. This short line was operational until 1969, when it was abandoned.[4]
Edward M. Durham, vice-president of the Missouri Pacific Railroad, took over as CEO in December 1935. He brought in John D. Farrington, general manager of the Fort Worth & Denver Railway, as operating officer in May 1936. Farrington started a scrap drive to finance a rail relay program and purchased ten diesel switchers and six diesel-powered Rocket streamliners. His program included line relocations between Davenport and Kansas City and a new bridge over theCimarron River just east of Liberal, Kansas. The railroad turned a profit in 1941. Durhan retired in July 1942 and Farrington became CEO.[1]
In competition with the Santa Fe Chiefs, the Rock Island jointly operated the Golden State Limited (Chicago-Kansas City-Tucumcari-El Paso-Los Angeles) with the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) from 1902 to 1968. The Rock Island did not concede to the Santa Fe’s dominance in the Chicago-Los Angeles travel market and re-equipped the train with new streamlined equipment in 1948. At the same time, the "Limited" was dropped from the train’s name and the train was thereafter known as the Golden State. The local run on this line was known as the Imperial.
The 1948 modernization of the Golden State occurred with some controversy. In 1947, both the Rock Island and Southern Pacific jointly advertised the coming of a new entry in the Chicago-Los Angeles travel market. The Golden Rocket was scheduled to closely match the Santa Fe’s transit time end-to-end and was to have its own dedicated train sets, one purchased by the Rock Island, the other by Southern Pacific. As the Rock Island’s set of streamlined passenger cars was being finished, the Southern Pacific abruptly withdrew its purchase. The Rock Island’s cars were delivered and would find their way into the Golden State’s fleet soon after delivery. The Golden State was the last first-class train on the Rock Island, retaining its dining and sleeping cars until 1968.

Click below to read more on Wikapedia


Cat's in the cupboard and she can't find me
Oh the Rock Island Line is a mighty fine line
Oh the Rock Island Line is the road to ride
If you want to ride, you gotta ride it like you're flyin'
Get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line
Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong
Lawd you gonna miss me when I'm gone
Oh the Rock Island Line is a mighty fine line
Oh the Rock Island Line is the road to ride
If you want to ride, you gotta ride it like you're flyin'
Get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line
Jesus died to save our sins
Glory to God I'm gonna see Him again
Oh the Rock Island Line is a mighty fine line
Oh the Rock Island Line is the road to ride
If you want to ride, you gotta ride it like you're flyin'
Get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line
Moses stood on the Red Sea shore
Smothin' the water with a two-by-four
Oh the Rock Island Line is a mighty fine line
Oh the Rock Island Line is the road to ride
If you want to ride, you gotta ride it like you're flyin'
Get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line


  1. leadbelly rock island line - YouTube

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iJEVOUqepo‎
    23 Sep 2008 - Uploaded by joehancock01
    leadbelly rock island line. joehancock01·37 ...Roots of Blues -- Lead Belly „Rock Island Line"by Slowtubbi207 ...

  2. Roots of Blues -- Lead Belly „Rock Island Line" - YouTube

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCiJ4QQG9WQ‎
    18 Jul 2008 - Uploaded by Slowtubbi
    Rock Island Line" (H. Ledbetter) Recorded: 1944 Lead Belly (vcl) (g), Paul Howard (cithare) Huddie William ...

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