Illinois Central Railroad

Illinois Central Railroad

Combined route map of the Chicago Central and Pacific (red) and Illinois Central (blue) railroads in 1996.[1]
Two Illinois Central EMD SD70s lead a train at Homewood, Illinois
Overview
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois
Founders	Robert Rantoul Jr. Robert Schuyler Jonathan Sturges[2]
Reporting mark	IC
Locale	Midwest to Gulf Coast, United States
Dates of operation	1851–1999
Predecessor	Mississippi Central
Successor	Canadian National Railway
Technical
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Previous gauge	5 ft (1,524 mm)
Length	3,130.21 mi (5,037.58 km)

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]