Alton Granite & St. Louis Traction

Company History: AG&StLTCo was established in 1904 and purchased the Alton Light & Traction Company. The company offered streetcar, interurban and freight service between Alton, Granite City, Edwardsville and East St. Louis, Illinois. In 1906, control of the company passed to East St. Louis & Suburban Company. Inflation due to the Great War put the company into financial trouble and it fell into receivership in 1920. By court order, the company was broken up in 1926. Illinois Terminal would ultimately end up with most of the lines.

Successor/Parent History: The Illinois Terminal has one of the most complicated histories for a railroad its size that I’ve ever seen. So without going into too much detail, the IT was established in 1890 when future US President William McKinley bought a streetcar line in the Champaign-Urbana, Illinois area. Within 20 years, he had an electrified interurban passenger and freight system linking Peoria, Bloomington, Danville, Champaign-Urbana, Decatur and Springfield with St. Louis. At its zenith, there was nearly 500 miles of line which included bypasses to keep the freight trains out of the city streets.

In 1904, McKinley went off to Congress and the Illinois Terminal became the Illinois Traction Company until the name reverted in 1937. The interurban passenger operations were significant and outlasted most other Midwestern lines. They were one of only 3 interurban lines in the country to operate sleepers. The principle sleeper route was between Peoria and St. Louis, which had no competition from the local steam roads. At the dawn of the Depression, IT had 124 interurban passenger cars, 22 steam locomotives, and 51 electric freight locomotives.

After the war, passenger service began to wane. By ’56, the intercity passenger service was gone and the last St. Louis area suburban service disappeared two years later. Diesels had begun to arrive in 1950, and by 1955, they had replaced steam and electrics in freight service. The earliest diesels were delivered in black with white trim which was later replaced with variations of bright green and yellow with silver trucks for the remainder of the line’s history.

Now just a hint of IT’s strange corporate machinations: in 1954, the Illinois-Missouri Terminal Railway was incorporated by B&O, C&EI, CB&Q, GM&O, Litchfield & Madison (later C&NW), IC, NKP, Frisco, and Wabash. The I-MT bought the IT 2 years later. The IT was then renamed “Liquidating Terminal” and the I-MT was renamed “Illinois Terminal.” NYC and RI would also buy slices of this IT. This was all for the purpose of providing neutral switching access in the St. Louis - Alton industrial belt for all of the city’s Class 1 carriers. Ironically, a decade before, the IT had been officially named “Liquidating Railway” and “Purchaser Railroad” for the brief period it took to transfer ownership at that time.

By 1980, IT had swapped nearly two thirds of their original mainline trackage for trackage rights on parallel Class 1’s rather than trying to upgrade their own. The freight was handled with 46 diesels with half a dozen SD39’s taking on the heaviest jobs. They also had over 2,600 freight cars. In 1981, the Illinois Terminal was purchased by Norfolk & Western and merged out of existence in 1982.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.