Nostalgia & History > East St. Louis IL in 1981

I found some old slides, including a couple of shots of the grain elevator in East St. Louis, IL, taken from the Gateway Arch in spring 1981. These were before Cargill put its name on the elevator, and at the height of East St. Louis's troubles - you can see rubble from destroyed buildings in the background. Grain cars are unloading and barges are being loaded. The slide had certainly "weathered," and I did my best to clean it up when I scanned it.

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I "THINK" that may be the old GM&O Freight house just to the right of the Grain Elevator and the old "Big Four" freight house just to the left. Great shot! No Casino Queen to muddle the view!

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Dept. of strange coincidences: My wife and I were watching tonight's adventure with Hercule Poirot on PBS tonight (usually has cool classic automobiles, and often has steam-powered trains), and the case involved a shadowy organization called "The Big Four". I commented that in this country, the "Big Four" was a railroad, but didn't expect to see a relic of that "fallen flag" in TO tonight.

And mention of the Casino Queen reminded me of staying at the CQ RV park nearby, and catching the Metrolink light rail trains on the far side of the parking lot.

That's a cool shot. I did the same thing in 1977. I posted that shot about 3 years ago:
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2494002,2494167#msg-2494167>

Lance

I had seen references the the Big Four, but didn't remember exactly what it was. A bit of look-up revealed that it was the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis RR. A map showed it covering Ohio and Indiana quite thoroughly, and the report stated that it was "leased by the New York Central in 1930." One wonders how much of the Big Four Route still exists. It's an interesting case of the nickname gaining official status, like the Nickel Plate or Soo Line.