DREI:(D&EI) Watco creates Decatur & Eastern Illinois Railroad from CSX routes

(Update: the DREI also absorbed the Eastern Illinois Railroad (EIRC) which was a NKP (Cloverleaf) remnant. [Trains, rtands])

WATCO

Bill Molony reported in the Sept/Oct 2018 Newsletter of the Blackhawk Chapter:

Watco to acquire CSX lines in Illinois and Indiana
The Decatur & Eastern Illinois Railroad will be the new name for the 127.6 miles of track that Watco will acquire from CSX.
CSX had put their Decatur Subdivision and Danville Secondary up for sale last January.
The DEIR will acquire the Decatur Subdivision between Montezuma, IN and Decatur, IL (an ex-Baltimore & Ohio line) [yellow line], as well as the Danville Secondary between Terre Haute, IN and Olivet, IL (an ex-New York Central Line) [greenish lines], plus the Paris Industrial Track in Paris , IL [blue line].

CSX Interactive Map plus Paint

The Paris Industrial Track is probably the Pennsy remnant that was part of a branch that left the Terre Haute-St. Louis route just west of the state line and went to Decatur.

The NYC route was two different Big Four routes. The dark green north/south line was the Big Four's Egyptian line. According to a satellite image, the part between Olivet and Danville has been abandoned. The segment from Paris to Olivet was probably saved to serve this mine. The 2005 SPV Map labels the mine "Black Beauty Coal Vermillion Grove Mine."

The two light-green lines was a Big Four route that went from Terre Haute to St. Louis via a connection with the C&EI at Pana, IL. Remember, when these railroads were built in the horse&wagon days of the 1800s, a route 15 miles away from another route (in this case the Pennsy Terre Haute-St. Louis route) was not only profitable, but was needed to open up the land for settlement. But with good roads and semi-trailer trucks, the two routes were redundant by the 1950s. They only still existed in the 1970s because of the, rather literal, horse & buggy mentality of federal regulators. When Conrail was formed, it kept the more direct Pennsy route and abandoned the NYC segment from Paris to Pana. When Conrail was split between NS and CSX, CSX got all of the routes going to Paris, IL. The segment from Terre Haute to Paris was part of the CSX sale to DEIR.