Contact: Ray Breyer.
Growing up in Illinois in the 1970s with a very active railfan for a father, I was introduced at a young age to the joys of railfanning in and around the Chicago area. Chasing down the last traces of pre-Amtrak and pre-Conrail American railroading was an obsession with my father, and it rubbed off on me. Being a transplanted Scranton native, my dad's favorite roads were the E-L and LV, with a very large dash of PRR thrown in for fun.
My favorite roads are a bit different than his, however. Since I was steeped in the history of "fallen flags", I was always looking around for traces of long-gone roads. Being an Illinois native, I drifted towards home state roads, which the LV and E-L really weren't. Spending a lot of time in central Illinois led me to some of the lesser known roads of that region, and possibly one of the least talked about major rail hubs in America, Peoria.
Peoria, like Chicago or St. Louis, was one of those towns that any self-respecting Midwestern railroads just HAD to get to. Why? Good question. Of the 15 different railroads that served the Peoria area, only three are not stub branches into town. Most of the branches into Peoria are meandering afterthoughts, and none really fed a whole lot of traffic into the North, South or East. Those railroads that did depend on Peoria for their traffic base were destined to be swallowed up by more prosperous roads before I was born.
But Peoria has a lot going for it, especially from a modeling perspective. How many cities of less than 100,000 people can boast having the PRR, NYC, NKP, IC, GM&O, C&NW, CB&Q, CRI&P, M&StL, and ATSF as resident roads? Not to mention all the regionals, like the C&IM, TP&W, P&PU, PT Co., IT, and Federal Barge? In it's heyday, a railfan could witness the movements of all of these roads within a five mile circle of downtown. Peoria's Union Station was host to six road's passenger trains in the 1950s.
When I made the decision to become a "serious" modeler about five years ago, I knew I wanted to model a real place. I spend a lot of my free time railfanning, and I wanted a model railroad that represented what I liked the most about Midwestern railroading. I'm also a steam nut, and wanted to model someplace that would allow me to run engines from as many different roads as possible. But where? Chicago is too big to even contemplate modeling. So is St. Louis. Joliet? Nah, too seedy, and I'm not that bug a Rock Island fan. Rockford? Too many upper Midwest grainger roads. So I started researching the Peoria area, which seemed to offer the best of all worlds. It was small enough to model, large enough to host a variety of roads, was a nice mix of big industry and small town whistle stop, and was nearby enough to do some real railfanning/research in. And the character of the railroads in town changed depending on which side of the Illinois river I decided to model.
I chose the southeast side of the river, since all of the Eastern roads terminated there. Living in Illinois, it seems that most modelers either portray Western or upper Midwest roads, with the UP, ATSF and C&NW dominating. I wanted something different. What I chose was the NKP main line into Peoria, for a variety of reasons. Mostly, it was the steam. I've seen three live NKP steam engines since I was born, and they've all left a mark in what I like in steam operations. Given the choice of watching an 0-6-0 puttering around a museum yard all day, or standing trackside for 35 seconds of a NKP 2-8-4 charging down the mainline, the Berkshire will win every time.
As with most roads coming to Peoria, the NKP's ex-LE&W line was a stub-end terminal that didn't feed much traffic into the rest of the system. The line hosted three freights each direction each day, and one passenger train until 1952. The NKP didn't even have a real yard on the Peoria Division, instead leasing service space from the P&PU (Peoria's belt road). The NKP was important to three roads in town however: the M&StL, TP&W, and PRR. For the M&StL and TP&W, the NKP meant bridge traffic to and from the East, and very competitive travel times. Both roads fit their schedules to meet the time freights the NKP ran. For the PRR, the NKP meant actually getting into Peoria itself, since their trackage ended several miles East of town, at Farmdale, Illinois.
My current model railroad features this relationship between other roads and the NKP, circa 1950. I chose 1950 because it was the last year most roads still had steam running into Peoria. In 1949, all 15 roads in town had steamers in operation. By 1953, the IC was the last road that was all steam, and by 1955, all steam had been driven from town. Also in 1949, the interchange at Farmdale changed drastically. Before 1949, there was a three-way meeting between the NKP, TP&W, and PRR. But a major waterway project by the Corps of Engineers raised the grade of the TP&W, eliminating the diamond and interchange tracks, which were moved to East Peoria. 1950 was the only year the old line, "new" line, and TP&W steam were all in use at the same time. Finally, it's a whole lot easier to model the early 1950s than the late 1940s! (fewer resin freight cars to build!)
I'm modeling in HO scale (the only practical way to model steam these days), running mostly new models behind refurbished used brass steam and superdetailed Bowser engines. The layout itself will be a three-level "corkscrew" design (meaning the entire layout becomes one big helix around the walls), in a 12x30 area in my basement. Benchwork is about 1/3 done, with the lowest level benchwork being completed and the second level about 1/2 in. Train control will be Atlas Master DCC with tethered walk around. I'm using Peco code 75 track for everything but Peoria and staging yards, which will be Peco code 100. Rolling stock is mostly Branchline, Intermountain and Life Like Proto 2000, with large dashes of Bowser, Accurail, Westerfield and F&C cars, all equipped with Life Like metal wheelsets and Kadee #58 couplers. Currently, my roster includes 40 steam engines, 10 diesels, and over 300 pieces of rolling stock, all waiting for me to finalize the Peoria trackplan!
Taking a tour of my layout, we start at Peoria, on the lowest level. Since Peoria is still a HUGE area to model, I've had to severely compress it to fit in my basement. The 3'x30' shelf that is Peoria represents a VERY truncated version of the P&PU's main yard on the West bank of the Illinois River. Their roundhouse #1 and Unoin Station will also be modeled. The yard itself will serve three duties. It will receive trains via live interchange from the NKP, PRR, TP&W, IC and C&IM, will dispatch trains to those roads, and hold other cars for "future" interchange (in reality, all other interchange will be offline, making a lot of the capacity of the yard nothing more than a staging area). Moving out of Peoria, the mainline runs over a pitiful representation of the Illinois River (I only have room for so much!) into East Peoria and Wesley Junction, where the NKP's track really starts. The main then moves to Farmdale, where it interchanges with the TP&W and PRR. Both roads are "live" and each has a two-track staging yard for their own trains. Power for the PRR will be Bowser H-10s, and for the TP&W will be F3s and an ex-NYC H-5 2-8-0. The main continues past Farmdale, starting the climb to the upper levels.
The middle level on my layout is nothing more than mainline through corn and two whistlestop towns (Carlock and Deer Creek) with passing sidings. A major design compromise is in the separation of levels at this point: only 8". As the shelf itself is only 8" wide, it doesn't interfere with the lower deck, and is actually much higher at Peoria itself (13"), but it does look strange. However, access to the level isn't a problem, and the extra level eases my grade to a constant 1.5%, which isn't too far from the prototype (usually .6%, but climbing to 1.4% as it climbs out of two river valleys).
The third and uppermost level depicts the Bloomington, IL, area, and the end of my layout. Bloomington is another of those overlooked modelable towns, and my layout will depict the NKP, P&E, IC and GM&O in town. Benchwork hasn't made it here yet, but I plan on having live interchanges between all four of these roads. A connection at the top level will allow for continuous running on the NKP main, although the layout is designed for mostly point-to-point running.
Do my modeling plans make me a Pennsy modeler? Definitely. Peoria was a terminal point of the mighty PRR, no matter how under appreciated the line was. The Pennsy's line was restricted to short, light trains being pulled by an H-series consolidation, but it was still part of the system. My PRR mainline is penciled in, and features 25' of mainline, one silo on a stub siding, and two staging tracks, each capable of holding 10 car trains. While it doesn't' sound like much, especially considering the final 225' mainline run for the NKP, The Pennsy is a major player on my pike, and will have a dedicated road crew during Op sessions. Besides, given the size of the PRR's freight car fleet, fully 15% of my cars will have to be from the Pennsy, and possibly more. Remember: if you model railroading in the 1950s, you model the Pennsy!
Copyright 1996 - 2008
Last modified: November 23 2007.
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