Road Name Changes

See MISC at the bottom

Railroad Maps

1968 ConRail (This must have been the proposed railroads for what became law in 1974.)
C&NW from posting
C&NW from posting
CGW Google API
Cloverleaf with a branch to Indianapolis. Toledo, St. Louis & Kansas City, Indianapolis, Decatur & Western
EJ&E, 1965
Needs Javascript
Freight rail today, Federal Railway Administration
1850, zoomable
1874 several states, northern illinois from a search that has other years
1875 Illinois Central "Back when the name was most descriptive..."
1890's Erie
Erie 1930 Chicago Switching District
Illinois Central, including the Big Four from Kankakee through Indianapolis to Cincinnati
1921 Illinois Central Railroad
1921 GM&O (A reminder that it went to Kansas City as well as St. Louis.)
1896 Mobile & Ohio
1906 Wabash, 1875 TW&W (Wabash) 1884 (Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific)
Cloverleaf
1892 LE&W
CB&Q
1949 C&EI
NKP 1934 interchanges
Blueprints of NKP/LE&W yard in Indianapolis
NKP 1953
When the Vans controlled the NKP and C&O
1899 EJ&E (shows the Illinois River line going south of Coal City) 1922 EJ&E
Interurbans: C&JE and CA&E Joliet 1915 Interurban Trolley Guide Chicago & Joliet Electric Railway
C&WI
Chicago & Illinois Midland (C&IM) Rick F This map would be accurate from 1926 till the time of the abandonment of the line west of Cimic station in 1956.
BN yards (brokent) Fixed BN yards
Pennsy trackcharts (0Railroads\Penn\trackcharts)
BNSF archives (source)

Joliet, Aurora & Northern Railway (JA&N)
The Joliet, Aurora & Northern Railway Company completed its main line between Joliet and Aurora in 1886.
The JA&N connected with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy at Aurora and connected with the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Chicago & Alton, the Michigan Central and the Chicago, Santa Fe & Pacific railroads at Joliet.
Bill Molony On June 1, 1888, the Joliet, Aurora & Northern was leased to the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern. On October 29, 1888, the JA&N conveyed all of its property to the EJ&E and went out of business.

Union Stock Yard & Transit Company 1865-1898 (also referenced in http://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/2015/02/chicago-and-indiana-state-line-railway.html)
David Daruszka The Chicago & Atlantic would later become the Erie.

1898 CTT (B&OCT) 1898 Chicago Terminal Transfer. a predecessor of the B&OCT. The comments talk about the extension to Mayfair. It was evidently built because EJ&E cranked up its rates. But as soon as it was built, EJ&E backed off the rates and the extension was never operated.

1966 B&OCT

Brandon McShane Actually, B&O used a portion of the Inter-State Exposition Building, roughly on the site of the Art Institute, as its Chicago terminal until IC's track elevation through Hyde Park and Woodlawn broke the connection at Brookdale. The first B&O passenger trains called on Grand Central Station on Decembr 1, 1891.
Dennis DeBruler Some info as to how the B&O got to the IC: http://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/.../b-passenger... (no likes :-()
Jon Roma's IC condensed profile (IC's term for track charts) for Springfield Division (source has some comments about the Peoria area)

Chicago

A big collection via Encyclopedia of Chicago

Ted's bird's-eye view of the business district

Freight Data Resources
Annotated aerial photos
B&OCT
1688 (The Chicago River was a lake!)
1718

1851 Calumet area (Little did drain into Grand)
1821 & 1834
1830s Scharf river mouth detail
1835
1850 and 1890
1851, prior to ICRR construction
1851, LoC URL
Dennis DeBruler Pershing being the southern boundary is why the Union Stock Yards were built just south of there, and Western Avenue being the western boundary is why three different railroads built just west of it.
1851-53 Mendel Map

1855 Chicago (source) It shows that the South Branch was even more crooked back then
1868 Smithsonian interactive map
1869, Calumet Harbor
1871, months before the fire
1873, another posting of the 1873 map with a comment providing a map that show how the shoreline changed, zoomable+downloadable-1100x1339
1886 Robinson's map (John Smith was the source)
1893
1897 Chicago
1897
1898 Birds-Eye View

1898 CTT (B&OCT)
1900-14, 1911 Terminal Map
1906 Termnal Map
1910
pedway
How it has grown

1914 Chicago District
1915 Smoke Abatement Report, p. xxx (add 300 and subtract 1 to the Index # to get the page number) another digitization (permaent link) unfortunately, it requires a "partner login" but it does have a "go to page" feature. (source)
1916
1919 improvement plan
1920 Chicago & Western Indiana
Ted's 1902 Terminals of the C&NW
voting: wards map
1900-14 map collection (source)
Lost Industries (Made In Chicago Museum, Facebook)
Rail Yards, alphabetical
Four 1909 neighborhoods
A Facebook album of 55 maps
1938 "El"

1961 Chicago Terminal District
How many railyards?
Joseph Cermak's Chicaoland Railyards and contemporary names of subdivisions (source)
1995 navigation charts of Calumet River mouth
TrainsChicagoMap&CREATE (also the file name of a local copy in 0Railroads

Indian trails in Chicagoland
Lost Factory Map
1911 Southeast Chicago

Illinois

1940 Road Map

Galbraith's 1898 railway mail service; about Galbraith's maps (source)
Freight Data Resources
IDOT 2015-16 Secretary of State Digital Archives
IDOT: Rail System; 1928; Current (2021)

IDOT collection of historical road maps (share) The state has posted highway maps, with railroads, going back to 1935. U.S. highways were numbered about 1925; interstates came after 1956.
Topos
Walker's SPV Atlases
Carpenter's Rail Atlas in 1946
Illinois Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps COD library number: 21304004559473
Chicago Junctions with Google My Maps
Historical Topos
Aerial

1897 Galbraith's (source)
1898

1898 LoC Bill Edrington: Some main lines hadn’t been built yet then, either: the Big Four’s “Short Line” cutoff from Hillsboro to Mitchell (Lenox); the IC’s Edgewood Cutoff; the Chicago & Alton’s “Air Line” from Iles (Springfield) to Murrayville; the C&NW’s Southern Illinois Division from Nelson down to Peoria and Benld; the CB&Q’s southern Illinois coal line south of Drivers/Woodlawn; the Chicago, Terre Haute & Southeastern (which became the Milwaukee Road’s Terre Haute Division); the C&EI cutoff from Woodland Junction to Villa Grove; and probably some more that are eluding me at the moment.
Illinois State Library
1876
David Cantrell's Southern Illinois Railroad Maps
AJ Grigg Abandoned Railroad Corridors Map
south yards details, downloads a .djvu file
Peoria area RRs
Kankakee topo
1876 Joliet
David Jordan (need regular permlink)

Bill Molony posted
This map of Joliet from the 1876 Atlas of Illinois shows the locations of the tracks of the Chicago & Rock Island, the Joliet &Northern Indiana, and the Chicago & Alton.
Keep in mind that all of these railroads in downtown Joliet were still at grade, and that the AT&SF and the EJ&E had not arrived yet.
The track elevation in Joliet was done in 1908-1010, and Joliet Union Station opened in 1912. Prior to that time, each of the railroads serving Joliet had its own stations.

More info

1843 Illinois coal basin Brendan Morse It’s interesting to see how many of the important cities of the 1840s are barely thought of today. The original Kaskaskia doesn’t really exist anymore but it was once home to the Illinois statehouse
1830
1934

Indiana

Interactive map index for old aerials, but you get just the thumbnails for free
MapIndy is supposed to index aerials of several years
list of links. e.g. Vandalia
Sanborn Maps Chesterton Sanborn
Purdue's, has detail inset for East Chicago and Gary
Labeled 2012 INDOT
INDOT, active and abandoned, but MAIN-RR-11 does work
Allen County
Fort Wayne Interurbans

Fort Wayne building research:

Ashley Marie Pepple Check the sanborns for early history http://gisdb.uits.indiana.edu/ISDP/filelist.php...
Check the property card for approximate construction date http://www.acimap.us/viewer.html

Ashley Marie Pepple Becky Osbun they're what I use at work to research old buildings in Fort Wayne. At the bottom of the top link is a fire insurance map drop-down that you can pull up old maps from the late 1800s and early 1900s and then on the other link you can pull up the property to see when buildings were built.
1999 NS-CSX split
list of maps, "2011 Indiana Railroad Map" is the following
Railfan
Hoosier Valley
Aerial Maps
From IndianaRailroads:
list1
list2
fav1
fav2
fav3
fav4
Indianapolis area
1850 (source) 1850. The first long distance railroad had been completed in 1847. The Indiana Sentinel in January 1850 reported 18 railroads in operation, under construction, or chartered. Here is their view of all things railroad in Indiana.

1925 Calumet Region Industries

Color coded railroads including abandoned

Iowa

John Smith's list of Sanborn and other fire insurance maps
2013
abandonments

1902 railroads

Kansas

Kansas Memory
DOT .pdf
1800s collection

Michigan

Michigan State Rail Plan
Labeled 2007 MDOT
MRA, including details of Detroit
list
1895
Detroit Terminal Railroad (and industries) (source) "Suggestion for better inspection. Right-click your mouse and select 'view-image', then Ctrl and + to enlarge."

Minnesota

MnDOT track diagrams

Ohio

Freight Rail System Profile (lots of maps)
Toledo, 1951
Toledo, train densities from Rail Fan Guides
abandoned railroads query
Abandoned Toledo Terminal "backside". Has links to Wabash and Cloverleaf Mainline stuff

Pennsylvania

2015DOT
Sanborn
old aerial photos

Misc

Steel Plants
Made In Chicago (source mentions a bunch that are missing)

Jack Crelling's Coal and Carbon Petrographic Atlas (from SIU)
Here's a truckload of detailed coal maps, fm thicknesses and quality for Christian County.

Penn State Sanborns
Indianapolis (IUPU) Sanborns
History Center, Indiana Data Spatial Portal
digital library Sanborns before 1923 (source)
SPV Map

Free? Illinois Sanborn Maps
John Smith's index of the Chicago maps

Digital Sanborn Maps by State (ProQuest)
Another Sanborn guide

William Knight Raymond's fire insurance maps and a copyright discussion

http://www.openrailwaymap.org/?lang=&lat=41.42625319507269&lon=-88.31222534179688&zoom=9&style=standard

ILHAP My maps B&OCT Map STB Rail Heritage Map Illinois 1928 Penn State Aerials Historic IL Topos Illinois State Atlas 1876 1868 Interactive Chicago Map

www.historicmapworks.com
http://historicalmaps.arcgis.com/usgs/ historical topographic maps
FRA Safety
Tony Howe's mapping effort
LoC Sanborn Maps: 1, 2 3 Library of Congress is putting Sanborn Maps online
RailServe, a lot more than just maps, e.g. reporting marks, BRC History
Map Empire including Pam Rietsch's 1895 U.S. Atlas
Harrison Tower
position-light
Brighton Park

1840-50 principal routes (source)

Made in Chicago Museum map of headquarters (Facebook)

Some short bio's on Chicago's diagonal streets: more in comments on posting (our plank road went to Naperville)

Michael Siola posted six images with the comment: "Not sure where the Calumet Region actually is? Here are a few maps showing its location and some of the natural and man-made features found in the area."

Michael Siola shared

6
Dennis DeBruler commented on Michael's post
It is too bad that you did not include the URLs of the sources so that we could access higher resolution. I know this one is available at:
https://images.indianahistory.org/.../colle.../dc035/id/141/

DLD Reference

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Map Links