HO, HO, HO, SAID OUR OPEN HOUSE VISITOR

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1 2013 HO, HO, HO, SAID OUR OPEN HOUSE VISITOR Feb 2&3, Great Train Expo, Timonium, MD Feb 23&24, Greenburg Train Show, VA Beach For more information on these shows - Google or go to nrmrc/shows.html or NOTICE: You ll be receiving new membership cards in January. RVME CREW MEETING January 15, 2012, 6:30 Be thinking about issues you think need to be addressed amongst the membership. CORRECTION According to Bill Oertly, the picture of the Freight Car Mfg building is the wrong building. The RVME, in conjunction with the VMT, held their annual holiday open house on Saturday, December 8. At 9 A.M. members started to arrive to ready their layouts and complete any last minutes details. John and Slim were crewing the On30; Joe, Mitch, Fred, and Tim were busy setting up consists for the N scale layout; Jim, Bill, Don, and the Brown boys got their early enough to check out the DCC system and set up their HO consists; David s Lionel layout is getting a modification, but, as always, the outer loop was good to go and our tag along person Todd was there to operate the hallway N-scale layout. sorry if I got some of the names wrong or left anyone out. The doors opened up at 10 and attendance at this time was very light; however, the closer it got to noon time the hallway, and scale rooms were full. The kids, of course, were having a blast on the children s layout which made that area jammed with kids and parents. We were honored to have a visit from Santa Claus who was making his rounds in the museum. I guess he knew we had many kids in the depot and he just had to come down and greet one and all. As the door greeter, I would ask how they liked what they saw as they exit the depot and everyone said they were glad they came and liked what they saw. I saw two little boys put up such a fuse and refused to leave because they were having such a good time! Attendance was between 250 and 300 visitors. The counter went on the blink so I can t give you an exact number. Donations amounted to approximately $100 and the sales tables brought in about the same (Continued On Next Page)

2 R oa n ok e V a l l ey M o del E n gi n eer s Page 2 amount. The RVME would like to thank the VMT for the wonderful morning pastries and coffee plus the mouth watering lunch. RVME PATCHES-$5 YOUR NAME BADGE-$7

3 ROANOKE VALLE Y MODEL ENGINEERS Page 3 LEARNING PROTOTYPE Illinois Terminal Railroad Company In the early years of the 20 th Century the ownership of various streetcar lines in smaller towns was being consolidated. The next step was to connect the towns by construction of cheaply built right-of-way thru rural areas. These lines were called an Interurban Railroad. Most often, trains were simple single car coaches with a compartment to handle express package service. Six hundred volt DC trolley line provided the power. In 1901 the Illinois Terminal Railroad Company (ITC) originated in Central Illinois. The railroad expanded to approximately 500 miles, connecting St Louis with the Central Illinois cities of Springfield, Peoria, Decatur, Champaign and Danville. In the 1920 s the ITC management realized that widespread highway expansion would soon deplete the traffic base of passengers and package service. The interurban would be rebuilt into a Class I freight carrier. Modern electric freight motors pulled cars interchanged with the larger steam railroads. Passenger service would be improved to include overnight sleeping cars and streamlined trains. Several short line steam roads were acquired by the ITC in order to feed additional freight traffic into the electric lines. In the early 1950 s, Santa Fe Railroad attempted to purchase the ITC in order to gain access to the rail gateway of St Louis. In order to prevent Santa Fe from serving the St Louis area, eleven railroads joined together with a plan to purchase the ITC. They would allow the ITC to operate as an independent carrier. In order to make the Illinois Terminal profitable they arranged to run ITC freight on their parallel routes under inexpensive trackage-right contracts. Paying rent to run on another company s track enabled the ITC to abandon many miles of lightly used, but expensive to maintain, track. The electric locomotives and the costly overhead trolley wire was replaced by diesel power. Passenger service was discontinued. By the 1970 s the Illinois Terminal was doing quite well. Unit coal trains served on line mines and power plants. Train loads of grain products destined for Europe travelled ITC s route from Central Illinois to Mississippi River Barges at St Louis. High revenue chemical traffic flowed from on-line refineries. Things were going a little too good. Mergers and other changes in the rail industry made the St Louis gateway less valuable to the Santa Fe. The ITC was becoming too much of a competitor to its current nine owners. In 1981 the Norfolk and Western purchased the system from the other owners. Today about 30 miles of the original 500 remain in service handling much of the same coal, grain and chemical traffic. In 2012 Norfolk Southern included the Illinois Terminal in one of the Heritage Locomotive paint schemes. Green and Yellow SD 70ACe, number 1072, can be seen from time to time in Roanoke. Interurban cars, a rail bus and freight motors are preserved at the Museum of Transportation in St Louis. Interurban cars and a freight motor are preserved (some operable) at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, IL. The unlettered office car at the Virginia Transportation Museum here in Roanoke is a former IT car. (Photos Next Page) DOING A PROJECT? SHARE IT IN THE RVME NEWSLETTER.

4 ROANOKE VALLE Y MODEL ENGINEERS Page 4 Photos by article author John Beirne Illinois Terminal PCC Trolley and Streamliner in the scrap line at St Louis in 1966 Illinois Terminal Class B Electric Freight motor number Operational in 1970 at Illinois Railroad Museum- Union, IL in August 1970 HO Scale model of an Illinois Terminal ALCO S-2. Repainted and decaled from a Bachman Santa Fe S-4. ALCO RS-1 number 1056 in East St Louis in May Second Section Train 201 crossing the Mackinaw River near Peoria, IL on track purchased from Penn Central. GP 10 number 1750 and a GP 38-2 power the train running in two sections in March of Illinois Terminal Railroad (NW, EMD) began life as the Illinois Traction System in 1896 as an interurban electric railroad in central and southern Illinois. Hit by the Great Depression, it was reorganized as the Illinois Terminal in 1937 and attempted to survive as a passenger railroad until relinquishing that business in 1956, when it was acquired by a consortium of railroads. It was operated as a freight railroad until acquired by NW in Photo by NS Office car special touring the ITC arrives in St Louis from Decatur, IL in September 1981 on the first day of N&W ownership. RVME PATCHES-$5 YOUR NAME BADGE-$7

5 R O AN OK E V AL LE Y M OD E L E N G I N E E R S Page 5 PHOTO-OP The 1218 has the Christmas Spirit. VMT Photo From Their Web Site RVME PATCHES-$5 YOUR NAME BADGE-$7

6 Roanoke Valley Model Engineers Page 6 GIVE THESE ESTABLISHMENTS YOUR SUPPORT TODAY. Rail Yard Hobby Shop 7547 Williamson Rd, Roanoke, VA % OFF WITH YOUR MEMBERSHIP CARD. Bob s last request! MEMBERSHIP MEETING January 15, 2013 HAPPY BIRTHDAY Rich Slick Conroy David Shields Mitch Spencer Martin Luther King, Jr. Born: January 15, 1929 Died: April 4, 1968 Nobel Peace Prize 1964 DOING A PROJECT? SHARE IT IN THE RVME NEWSLETTER.