Fulton County (1878)

Company History: The FCNG was established in 1878 to build a 3’ gauge line from West Havana, Illinois on the Illinois River north to Lewistown then to coal mines around Fairview, a distance of 29 miles. By 1882, they had extended the line north another 30 miles to Galesburg. Two trains per day ran the length of the railroad. During this period promoters of the narrow gauge concept were cobbling together a 3’ gauge system that would stretch from the Great Lakes to the Rio Grande. The FCNG would have been part of a route to the Quad Cities on the Mississippi River but alas, their planned connections were either never built or built to standard gauge. By the time trains were running the length of the line, FCNG was effectively a subsidiary of the Chicago Burlington & Quincy. In the summer of 1903, they began replacing bridges along the line to handle the heavier standard gauge trains. In October of 1905, the entire line had been standard gauged. The CB&Q leased the property on the first day of 1906 and the FCNG was officially merged out of existence in 1908.

Successor/Parent History: The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (reporting mark CBQ) was a railroad that operated in the Midwestern United States. Commonly referred to as the Burlington or as the Q, the Burlington Route served a large area, including extensive trackage in the states of Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and also in New Mexico and Texas through subsidiaries Colorado and Southern Railway, Fort Worth and Denver Railway, and Burlington-Rock Island Railroad.[citation needed] Its primary connections included Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver. Because of this extensive trackage in the midwest and mountain states, the railroad used the advertising slogans "Everywhere West", "Way of the Zephyrs", and "The Way West". It merged into Burlington Northern in 1970.

In 1967, it reported 19,565 million net ton-miles of revenue freight and 723 million passenger miles; corresponding totals for C&S were 1,100 and 10 and for FW&D were 1,466 and 13. At the end of the year CB&Q operated 8,538 route-miles, C&S operated 708 and FW&D operated 1362. (These totals may or may not include the former Burlington-Rock Island Railroad.)

Information sourced from Wikipedia

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