The Illinois Central Railroad (reporting mark IC), sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, was a railroad in the Central United States. Its primary routes connected Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, and thus, the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Another line connected Chicago west to Sioux City, Iowa (1870), while smaller branches reached Omaha, Nebraska (1899) from Fort Dodge, Iowa, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota (1877), from Cherokee, Iowa. The IC also ran service to Miami, Florida, on trackage owned by other railroads.
The IC, founded in 1851, pioneered the financing later used by several long distance U.S. railroads whose construction was partially financed through a federal land grant. The Canadian National Railway, via Grand Trunk Corporation, acquired control of the IC in 1998, and absorbed its operations the following year. The Illinois Central Railroad maintains its corporate existence as a non-operating subsidiary. In 1971, Steve Goodman released a folk anthem, "City of New Orleans" about riding on Illinois Central's "Monday-morning rail" train and the passing of the "magic carpet" ride of passenger rail service in the United States, which once dominated travel.[3]
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.[5] Federal support, however, was not approved until 1850, when U.S. President Millard Fillmore signed a land grant for the construction of the railroad.[6] The Illinois Central was the first land-grant railroad in the United States.[7]
The Illinois Central was chartered by the Illinois General Assembly on February 10, 1851.[8] 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.
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.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Central_Railroad
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