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A Moment at Arcola

Arcola is a small town located in the vast prairies of central Illinois.  Like many small towns, much care has been taken in fixing up the downtown area.  In Arcola, this includes numerous murals painted on downtown buildings.

Arcola plays in the lore of the passenger trains of the Illinois Central Railroad.  So the story goes, a passenger stopped the conductor as he was walking through the train.

“Excuse me.  What is the next stop?”
“The next stop,” said the conductor, “is Arcola.”
“And what stop is after that?”
“The stop after that is Tuscola,” replied the conductor.
“Let me guess,” said the passenger.  “The stop after that is Pepsi Cola.”
The conductor shook his head.
“No sir.  Champaign.”

Whether or not this exchange ever actually happened is open to debate, but Arcola has not been a scheduled stop for a passenger train in decades.  It remains notable however, since one of the murals features an Illinois Central E-Unit in the original passenger colors from the forties with the reference to the famous song proclaiming “The train they call the City of New Orleans.”

Amtrak’s version of “The City” still passes through Arcola, one of three daily round trips, and this photo shows the northbound Illini passing with the mural in the background on a late September afternoon in 2015.

Mary McPherson – Photograph and text Copyright 2022

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Tracks & Traces

Road Trip – Part Two

At the Center for Railroad Photography & Art’s Conversations 2022 in Chicago last month, I was talking with some friends about my planned trip westward after the conference. Bryan Bechtold recommended a route across northern Kansas, following the railroad through the small towns that still remain in this prairie landscape.

This video presents a collection of photographs from my time in Kansas.

Edd Fuller, Editor

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Summers at the Station

Four friends who adopted me in the summers.

From 1966 until 1972, my parents rented a camp along Lake Pennesseewassee, in Norway, Maine. For my father, it was a break from his responsibilities on the Long Island Rail Road, and a chance to spend hours bass fishing, alone with his thoughts. When I wasn’t fishing or swimming, I’d head to Grand Trunk station in the adjacent community of South Paris. It took a bit of courage, but armed with a file of 8” X 10” glossy prints, I walked into the station and introduced myself to the block operator, a genial Quebecker named Guy Pomerleau. Guy smiled as he thumbed through the prints and told me to wait until the local switcher returned, as there was a conductor I should meet.

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Editor’s Notebook

Road Trip – Part One

It started with plans to drive to Chicago to attend the Center for Railroad Photography & Art’s yearly conference. The trip quickly expanded to drive across the prairie states to Colorado, from there to Santa Fe and then back east through New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee to arrive back home some 4700 miles and three weeks later. As much as possible, I stayed away from the Interstate Highways and followed the tracks through the small towns that once defined life in America.

Mural on 2nd Avenue – Montgomery, West Virginia

My Father’s Streets

The exit sign on the Interstate pointed to Montgomery and I turned onto a two-lane West Virginia road that I imagine had changed very little from the days when my grandparents lived in Montgomery. My father graduated from Montgomery High School during the war (WWII) and went into the Navy, where he served in the Pacific. My grandfather worked in the mines and when Dad came back from the service, they were living in Virginia.

Montgomery is a railroad town, and at one time was a major shipping point for coal mined in the Kanawha Valley. In the late 1800s, the town’s growth was spurred by the construction of the Kanawha & Michigan Railroad. By the 1940s, when my dad lived there, Montgomery was served by the Chesapeake & Ohio. Today the CSX Kanawha Subdivision and Amtrak run through Montgomery.

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