Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway HO Scale Models

The Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway came into existence on January 1, 1889, through the consolidation of several smaller Illinois and Indiana rail lines, including the Joliet, Aurora and Northern Railway, which traced its own origins back to 1884, and the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway Company of Illinois. The new railroad was designed to function as a circumferential belt line encircling the Chicago metropolitan area at a distance, connecting industrial communities and interchange points from Waukegan on Lake Michigan in the north, sweeping westward through Elgin and Aurora, then south through Joliet, and finally curving eastward into the Gary and Hammond industrial corridor of northwestern Indiana. This roughly circular configuration, spanning approximately 164 route miles by the end of 1970, earned the railroad the informal designation of the Chicago Outer Belt Line. The EJE rarely operated within Chicago proper, though it did serve the U.S. Steel South Works along the Lake Michigan shoreline. In 1898 the railroad became part of a consolidation that formed Federal Steel Company, and when U.S. Steel Corporation was assembled from a group of steel and related enterprises in 1901, the EJE passed into its ownership, where it would remain for most of the twentieth century. The railroad's primary function was as a connecting carrier between the Class I lines that converged on Chicago, allowing freight to bypass the chronically congested rail hub at the heart of the city. The EJE interchanged with virtually every major railroad serving the Chicago gateway, making it an indispensable link in the movement of bulk commodities, steel-related traffic, and general merchandise freight across the region. Passenger service had a relatively brief history on the property, beginning in January 1889 and ending altogether by 1909, with the final two years of service reduced to passengers riding in cabooses on mixed trains. The railroad also distinguished itself as an early adopter of diesel technology, acquiring its first diesel-electric locomotive, an EMC SW switcher designated number 200, in 1937. By late May 1949, when a Mikado-type steam locomotive made the final steam movement on the property, the EJE had completed a full transition to diesel power over roughly twelve years, well ahead of most American railroads. In 1988, U.S. Steel and the Blackstone Group formed Transtar Inc. as a holding entity for the EJE and several related rail and transportation operations, though by March 2001 the Blackstone Group had exited the arrangement, leaving Transtar as a wholly owned U.S. Steel subsidiary. Canadian National Railway, seeking a practical solution to the severe congestion its trains faced navigating through central Chicago, announced on September 26, 2007, its intention to acquire the majority of the EJE from Transtar for approximately 300 million dollars. The U.S. Surface Transportation Board approved the transaction on December 24, 2008, and the deal took effect on February 1, 2009. A portion of the Indiana trackage was retained by Transtar and reorganized as the Gary Railway to continue serving U.S. Steel facilities in that city. Canadian National began operating trains over the former EJE lines in March 2009, and subsequently invested heavily in upgrading track, signals, and interchange facilities. The outer belt route quickly proved its value, allowing CN to route a substantial share of its Chicago-area traffic around the city's congested core rather than through it. Following the acquisition, the EJE continued for several years as a CN subsidiary, with some locomotives repainted into CN colors but still carrying EJE sub-lettering. On January 1, 2013, exactly 124 years after the railroad's founding, the EJE was formally merged into Wisconsin Central Ltd., another CN subsidiary, and ceased to exist as a separate corporate entity. Its legacy endures primarily in the physical infrastructure of the outer belt corridor, which remains one of Canadian National's most strategically important assets in the Midwest and continues to carry a significant proportion of that railroad's through freight around the Chicago gateway.