Any sections of Rock Island still operable?

[57A26]

AFAIK, CSX leases the trackage it operates. The original lease was for 50 years and I think is still in effect. There was a company mentioned who has ownership in the STB procedings when IAIS sub leased from CSX the parts they now operate. I don't remember the name and don't know how they received actual ownership.

The RI estate was reorganized and became a holding company that eventually was merged into Maytag. Maytag wanted the applicance companies the Chicago Pacific Corp had acquired. It may have been then when the last of the rail related assests were sold.

JLH

[RIEnthusiast]

In Belleville, Arkansas (three miles west of Danville), we saw a surprising sight on the right-hand or north side of highway 10. Although the tracks have been torn up and removed west of Danville and there is no sign at all of any railroad tracks on this side of the highway, the crossing gates and signals are still there in Belleville where state highway 307 used to cross the tracks. Although the crossing gates and signals are still standing, they are probably inoperable now. One of the crossing gates seemed to be stuck in the down position. Otherwise, west of Danville, the tracks have been torn up and there isn't much left of the Rock Island except for occasional bridges and/or bridge abutments. There are a few places where you can tell that there used to be a railroad track just to the north of the highway.

There's a similar situation in Bland, Mo; however, there was some vandalism and one of the lights was removed. I think the rails are still there, although they're pretty much buried over with dirt/debris/weeds and are completely unusable - this would be on the St. Louis subdivision between St. Louis and KC I think.

I was curious enough to actually do a google maps search for the crossing signal you mentioned; luckily for us Google street view caught it, and I thought I'd share what I found; my apologies if this counts as excessive - the images are already shrunk to some degree, and you can click to get a larger view.

[fauxcelt]

Since we don't have a camera right now, we were unable to take pictures of the crossing gates and signals at Belleville. Thank you for posting these pictures. Maybe the next time we go to the state park at Mount Magazine, we may have a camera and be able to take some pictures of the Little Rock & Western on our way there.

Laurence

[Komachi]

We saw only three engines on the LR&W--two at the railroad's maintenance shop in Perry and one in use. Yes, it is possible there are more but we may have missed seeing them. No I don't know enough about railroad locomotives to say what make and model they were or who manufactured them. Arkansas state highway 10 runs east-west parallel to the tracks from Perry to Danville. Somewhere between Danville and Ola, we passed an eastbound train of approximately ten covered hopper cars being pulled by one engine. No, I was unable to determine how fast this train was traveling.

According to a little digging I've done online...

The LR&W has a couple ALCo. C-420s, 1-3 GP-7/9s and a couple SW-1504s.

Rolf Stumpf's "ALCo. World" website...
http://alcoworld.railfan.net/lrw.htm

And...

Railroad Picture Archives . Net...
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoList.aspx?id=LRWN

[fauxcelt]

Thank you for the link to the engine pictures, Komachi. After looking carefully at all of the pictures, I think what we saw on the LR&W that day in March was the two Alco's and one of the Geep's but I can't remember which one was in the maintenance shop at Perry and which one was pulling the train that we saw between Danville and Ola. The next time we drive through there, I will try to get a better look at the engines if it is possible to do so without trespassing on the LR&W's property or ROW.

Laurence