UNION – The Illinois Railway Museum bills itself as the largest museum of its kind in the United States. It’s a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization run by its members on 120 acres, with more than 12 buildings and nearly 400 locomotives and cars.
All of that is just 16 miles from downtown Belvidere and open for a modest admission price April through October, with special events throughout the operating year.
While most of the exhibits are stationary, rides are offered on a streetcar and an interurban car.
The streetcar jaunt is a brief one, touring the grounds and lasting 10-15 minutes. Bob Opal, a retired lawyer who once worked for a railroad company, was the engineer this particular day and offered some history on the streetcar.
It dated to 1923 and operated in the city of Chicago for 30 years.
"They were vital in the early part of the 20th century," he said of those people movers. With horses and carriages available only to the wealthy, streetcar systems "changed the face of cities." There were 1,000 miles of track in Chicago and streetcars carried hundreds of thousands of passengers every day.
But the coming of the automobile and buses did away with streetcars starting in the 1920s. Still, Opal said the Chicago streetcar system was almost in tact at the end of World War II, with the city converting to buses in 1958.
He asked if anyone knew what the Chicago Loop was named after and no one did. So he reported that the Loop was named for cable cars because of their routes, going back to the late 1800s.
The ride on the interurban car, which travels along a set of railroad tracks at speeds of up to 40 mph, is a lot longer, lasting about 30 minutes. It travels four miles to the east and seven miles to the west, before returning to the station.
It is a scenic journey, passing farms, cornfields, wooded terrain and throw-back crossings marked only by wooden signs.
Engineer Henry Vincent Jr. said this people mover was built in 1926 and carried passengers from Joliet to Princeton until 1935, when it moved south and worked the route from St. Louis to Granite City until 1956.
There’s one car left from the old Chicago, North Shore and Milwaukee line that ran in 1917 and made a historic, one time only, trip from Milwaukee to Rockford that same year. Car 160, which was retired in 1963, is housed in Barn No. 6 at the museum.
This is one of several one of a kind cars and locomotives on display in six large, rectangular barns on the grounds, all within easy walking distance of one another. Visitors are allowed to tour parts of selected passenger cars in Barn No. 3.
History in the barns
Those who like trains and their history should find contents of the various barns to be interesting.
Barn No. 3 has a collection of passenger cars, circa 1889, 1905, 1906 and 1935. At least one of them is accessible to visitors, providing a glimpse of a dining car, sleeper and lounge. Barn 4 houses electric cars, which are in varying stages of being refurbished.
An outdoor display area is next, featuring locomotives and cars, followed by Barn No. 6 with interurban passenger and freight cars circa the early 1900s. It has the only preserved interurban sleeper car in the United States, built in 1910. It has 10 sleeper sections, each with an upper and lower berth, and was retired in 1930. Later, it was used as a bunk car for maintenance workers.
Barn No. 7 has a number of street cars including one from 1859, horse-drawn and with bench seats for 18 people. Others carried people in 1895, 1903, 1907, 1908, 1921, 1927 and 1946. There’s a North Shore Electroliner from 1941 and an elevated line train car, made of wood, which ran in 1906.
Other one-of-a-kind equipment in this barn is a 1908 snow sweeper and a 1930 snowplow, both preserved and both used in Chicago.
There’s a bone yard with various unrestored engines and passenger cars and cars that carried cargo, followed by Barn No. 9 with a number of locomotives and train cars. One of the engines, built in 1944, is 109-feet long and weighs 460,000 pounds. The oldest locomotives date to 1880 and 1892.
Plenty of informational signs are in strategic locations, explaining in detail what the visitor is seeing. There’s a gift shop with bathrooms, along with a restaurant that offers a variety of sandwiches, accompaniments and beverages. Hours of the restaurant are 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekdays and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekends. Lunch is available after 11:30 p.m. whether on a weekday or the weekend.
Depot historic, too
The old depot that’s part of the museum complex once sat in Marengo, along the Elgin & Belvidere line that ran from Freeport to Chicago with stops in Rockford, Belvidere, Garden Prairie, Union, Huntley, Gilberts and Elgin. It was built in 1851, a few miles west of Union.
Passenger service to Marengo ended in 1950, but the depot continued in use for freight until the mid-1960s. The Illinois Railway Museum purchased the building in 1967, from the Chicago & North Western Railroad, and it was moved in two pieces to its current location. It is the oldest station in continuous service west of Pittsburgh.
Inside the depot are encased railroad-related displays with maps and artifacts. The ticket window dates to 1920 and was used in the North Shore line ticket booth in Milwaukee. The booth closed in 1963.
The vast majority of the people who report for work at the museum are volunteers, and they logged more than 50,000 hours last year.
"It’s a labor of love," said Nick Kallas, general manager whose been with the museum since 1958, when it was still in North Chicago and known as the Illinois Electric Railway Museum. "It’s run like a business but most of us work for free."
The museum currently is open weekdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., through Labor Day; Saturdays and Sundays, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. through October. Cost of admission weekdays is $8 for adults; $6 for seniors 62 and older; and $4 for children 3 to 11. Weekends the admission price is $12 for adults; $10 for seniors; and $8 for children.
Direct questions to 1-800-BIG RAIL or visit www.irm.org.
On The Road is an occasional feature highlighting travel destinations in the Midwest.
