Company History: The ESLJ was established in 1918 by the National Stockyards Company to operate the parent company’s 26 miles of track serving the stockyards in National City in the northwest corner of East St. Louis, Illinois. The parent company had first built track in 1872. In addition to the stockyards, ESLJ served packing houses of Amour, Hunter, Morris and Swift as well as a few cold storage warehouses. During the particularly busy month of October, 1920, ESLJ was switching 450 loads per day. Of course, livestock and reefer traffic was among the first business lost to the trucking industry. In 1975, part of the ESLJ line was leased to Chicago & North Western. The last big ESLJ customer was Hunter Packing and they closed in 1982. To add insult to injury, in 1986 a major fire destroyed the stockyards office building, taking with it all of ESLJ’s company records. Union Pacific took over operation from C&NW of the leased segment following their merger and UP filed to abandon it in 2003.
Text Courtesy of Bluford Shops
Text Courtesy of Bluford Shops
Item Links: We found: 1 different collections associated with East St. Louis Junction - Railroad
- Collection N Scale Model Trains: 15 different items.
Item created by: gdm on 2017-10-10 09:56:28. Last edited by gdm on 2017-10-17 22:20:59
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