Alton & Southern Railway

Satellite, Gateway Yard

To summarize their history, the railroad was started in 1910 by an aluminum plant in Alorton, IL to break the service monopoly of the Southern Pacific. It kept growing along the east side of the St. Louis metro area to connect with more and more railroads and transloading on the Mississippi. As it became important as a belt route, it embraced that role in the 1960s by building Gateway Yard as a terminal railroad hump yard. Alco acquired the aluminum company, but then closed it in 1966. The ICC forced the A&S to be sold to multiple owners so in 1968 MoPac and C&NW jointly purchased the line. That is why the engine livery has MoPac blue and C&NW yellow. And the C&NW logo design lived on as the A&S logo. UP ended up buying both railroads that jointly owned it, but has maintained it as an autonomous company.

I looked for a map of the railroad, but could not find one. From the northeast end of the yard, it ran westish to River Yard and Fox Terminal along the Mississippi River. But the section immediately to the west was abandoned. Evidently they now use the TTRA route between their yard and their western branch. From the southeast end of Gateway Yard, they have a route that heads northwest, then turns more north. turns east rather than cross I-64, then turns north and goes under I-64, crosses and interconnects with the B&O and PRR (now both CSX), turns east and crosses Horseshoe Lake twice, used to cross NKP(Clover Leaf) and Linchfield & Madison, turns north and terminates at Lenox Tower where it used to connect to Wabash, Chicago & Eastern Illiniois, and Chicago & Alton + CB&Q.