Lost Manufacturing

GE

Steve's post
DeKalb's 2015 closure
In Illinois 1962 had 15 plants employing over 13k people

Chicago Bakeries

this Butternut (the one I've already done? (yes: )) article lists the other four bakeries. Plus Entenmann's 

1938 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

The original Wonder Bread factory was on the southwest corner of Diversey and Lakewood. In 2011 it was converted to eleven luxury townhouses. (Curbed) In general, the resolution of the old aerial photos is not good enough to see tracks. But you can see the Chicago & Evanston tracks that are running up Lakewood where they cross Diversey.

The newer Wonder Bread plant. Ramon's post.

IH

East Moline combine plant

IH war promotion video includes footage of the Fort Wayne Works

Caterpillar

A 2015 video of its history.

During the mining boom a few years ago, the CEO of Caterpillar decided to build more plants so that he could meet that demand. Part of that expansion was to move the building of road graders from Decatur, IL to a plant down south so that Decatur could build more big mining trucks. Now that mining activity has collapsed, the Decatur plant no longer has the road construction option to help keep it active. So as part of its downsizing because the expansion was a very expensive mistake, Cat is moving some production from Aurora to Decatur. (Update: now I'm reading all production will be moved to other locations.)

Customer posting
Peoria posting
Lost Illinois posting (Aurora newspaper article and some comments)