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CHAPTER XXVIII OTHER RAILROADS-ILLINOIS CENTRAL AND THEBES RAILROAD BRIDGES -THE CAIRO HARBOR AND BACON ROCK-FERRIES: CAIRO'S NEED OF R AILROAD COMPANIES-Cairo has becO'me quite a railrO'ad center. The roads tO'gether with the rivers reaching southward and nO'rtheastward and northwestward give us transportatiO'n facilities equaled by very few other places in the cO'untry. The railroads centering here are of such importance to the city as to require a shDrt account Df each Dne Df the same. Besides the IllinDis Central RailrO'ad,· so fully spoken Df elsewhere, we have now the Mobile & OhiO' RailrDad, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, ChicagO' & St. Louis Railway Dr Railroad, cO'mmDnly called the Big Four, and across the river in Missouri, the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & SDuthern Railway and the St. LDUis, Southwestern Railway. Besides these we have the CairO' & Thebes Railroad which will SDon be cDmpleted and put in operation. The IllinDis Central Railroad Company was chartered February 10, 1851, and its cDnstruction extended through the years 1852 to' 1855. There has been some little cDntroversy as to' when the Illinois Central Railroad was finished and first opened fO'r O'peration. In the "Cairo City Times" (vDlume I number 17, edilled by ':ViIliam A. Hacker and Len. G. FaxO'n) of September 20, 1854, is found a communicatiDn frDm William P. Burrall, the president of the railroad company, to' the executive committee of the cO'mpany, dated at ChicagO', September 7, 1854, in which he says that Since the 1St instant I passed in company with our chief engineer, R. B. Mason, Esq., over the entire line between Cain~ an~ La Salle, 308 miles, ~nd find its condition to be as follows:-The track IS laId and ready for operatIOn from Cairo north 88 miles, with the exception of the bridge over the Big Muddy River, 60 miles north of Cairo. . • • From La Salle south the track is laid 134 miles, with the exception of a piece of 10 miles north of Decatur. . • • The limit work to complete the main line is, therefore, the track laying over the space between the point 88 miles north of Cairo and that of 134 miles north of La Salle, which is a distance of 86 miles, at the end of which is a strong party now employed in laying track and approaching each other. When they meet the entire main line will be ready for operation. North of La Salle our track is laid 16 miles to the Aurora junction. From that junction to Freeport, 60 miles, the grading is now substantially ready for the track. • • . I think, therefore, that on the 1st day of January next we may expect the whole line, from Cairo to Galena to be ready for operation by regular trains, giving us by Chicago and Galena road, a line from Chicago to Galena, by Aurora extension road a line from Cairo to Chicago, and by the Ohio and Mississippi road a line from St. Louis to Cairo. . . . On the Chicago branch the track is laid from Chicago south 143 miles and the grading is complete, ready for the rails for a further distance of 33 miles. . . • We have, therefore, now actually laid 409 miles of track. 220 OTHER RAILROADS 221 The first time-table of the Cairo trains appears in a number of issues of the said newspaper in which it is stated that on and after "Monday, January 8th (1855), passenger trains will leave Cairo at six o'clock A. M., connecting at Sandoval with the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad for St. Louis; at Decatur with the Great Western Railroad for Springfield, Jacksonville and Naples; at Bloomington with the Chicago and Mississippi Railroad; at La Salle with the Rock Island Railroad for Rock Island and Davenport; and at Mendota with the Chicago and Aurora Railroad for Chicago." There are a number of other references in this newspaper to work on the Central, but I can find no statement as to the time when trains were first in operation over the whole line of about 710 miles of railroad. It must have been as late as the first of October, 1855, when the road was fully completed and in operation. As late as August 1, 1855, the travel to Chicago was still by the main line to Mendota and thence by what is now the C. B. & Q. See "Times" of August 8, 1855. The Mobile & Ohio Railroad Company was chartered by the legislature of Alabama February...

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