Bluford Shops - 73531 - Open Hopper, 3-Bay, 70 Ton Offset - Chicago & Illinois Western - 922

Prototype History: 70 ton 3-bay offset side hoppers first appeared in the late 20s and by the late 30s had become an AAR standard design with cars being delivered from a number of builders in large quantities to railroads across the country. The last of these cars were delivered in the mid-'60s and many remained in service through the 80s.

Road Name History: The railroad of the Chicago & Illinois Western Railroad was a single-track, standard-gauge, steam, switching railroad, located in northeastern Illinois. The main line extends southwesterly from a connection with the tracks of The Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad Company at Western Avenue in the city of Chicago, to Gary, 10.873 miles, with a branch line to Hawthorne, aggregating 12.027 miles of road. The main line formerly extended beyond Gary to Willow Springs, Ill., but on valuation date the track between these points, 1.723 miles, was temporarily removed. In addition, the carrier has trackage rights over 9.95 miles of the road of other carriers, and leases for exclusive use certain yard tracks and facilities.

First of all, don’t confuse this line with Chicago & Western Indiana of Dearborn Station fame. The Chicago & Illinois Western was a shortline with 33 miles of track serving a number of large industries in Harvester, Hawthorne and Gary in the greater Chicago area. Illinois Central took stock control of the C&IW in 1924 but the shortline remained a separate operation with their own locomotives and freight cars until it was finally merged into the Illinois Central in the run up to the IC – Gulf Mobile & Ohio merger of 1972.

Brand/Importer Information: Bluford Shops began in 2007 as a side project of two model railroad industry veterans, Craig Ross and Steve Rodgers. They saw a gap between road names available on N scale locomotives but not available on cabooses. They commissioned special runs of Atlas cabooses in Atlantic Coast Line, Central of Georgia, Monon, Boston & Maine and Southern plus runs on Grand Trunk Western and Central Vermont on the MDC wooden cabooses. While these were in process, they began to develop their first all new tooling project, 86' Auto Parts Boxcars in double door and quad door editions in N scale. By January of 2008, Bluford Shops became a full time venture. Along with additional N scale freight cars and their own tooling for new cabooses, they have brought their own caboose line to HO scale. They also have their popular Cornfields in both HO and N. The future looks bright as they continue to develop new products for your railroad.

The town of Bluford in southern Illinois featured a small yard on Illinois Central's Edgewood Cutoff (currently part of CN.) The yard included a roundhouse, concrete coaling tower (which still stands) and large ice house. Reefer trains running between the Gulf Coast and Chicago were re-iced in Bluford. Things are more quiet now in Bluford with the remaining tracks in the yard used to stage hoppers for mines to the south and store covered hoppers. Intersecting the IC line in Bluford is Southern Railway's (currently NS) line between Louisville and St. Louis. Traffic on this single track line remains relatively heavy.