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"Please Don’t Snag the Hangers"
By Richard R. Gill
Published in the Winter 2005-06 issue of First & Fastest

Kensington Interlocking, on the Illinois Central, was one of those places where a tower operator could really mess up big. And when you messed up big, there was no doubt that you did it, because there wasn’t anyone else around to blame. With one bubblehead move, you could:

1. Stop the Illinois Central Electric’s commuter rush hour;
2. Delay long-distance passenger trains (including the Panama Limited if you were really unlucky);
3. Bring 100 cars of coal to a squealing, teeth-rattling, how will-it-get-started-again-without-breaking-in-two stop;
4. Force a crew onto their hours-of-service limit; and
5. Tie up the entire west end of the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad (South Shore). The IC didn’t much care about this particular issue—more about that later.

Messing Up Big” could trigger up to five verbal events:

1. The operator’s outburst, usually “Oh, s__t!”
2. The Signal Maintainer’s fiendish laugh, “Ha, H-A-A-A-H, you really stepped in it this time, buddy boy.”
3. The phone call from the Chicago Division Dispatcher, and sometimes from the South Shore Dispatcher, too
4. The phone call from the Load Supervisor (1)
5. The phone call at home on the next day, from ‘way on high.’ “Mr. Zimmerman wants to know what happened out there last night.” You knew that this one had come down through at least seven layers of managers who couldn’t wait to kick it down one more level. There was no level lower than the tower operator. His was truly the bottom.

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"A Capsule History of the Rockford & Interurban Railway"
By Norman Carlson
"The Best Job I Ever Had: Reminiscences of John Hines, Motorman on the Rockford & Interurban Railway"
Recorded by Gordon Geddes and Stan Griffith
Published in the Winter 2005-06 issue of First & Fastest

The Rockford & Interurban Railway was a holding company that operated city streetcar services in Rockford and interurban services from Rockford west to Freeport, Illinois, north to Beloit and Janesville, Wisconsin, and east to Belvidere, Illinois. The Rockford & Interurban connected at Belvidere with the Elgin and Belvidere, which in turn connected with the Aurora, Elgin & Chicago at Elgin to provide service to Chicago.

The Rockford & Interurban holding company operated streetcar services in Beloit, on behalf of another company that shared some common ownership with it. In Janesville, a different company — which had some owners in common with the Beloit company — operated its own streetcar service there. In Freeport, an independent company operated a streetcar system that was partially on R&I trackage.

It would be genteel to describe the financial history of the R&I as tortured. The Rockford & Interurban name came into being on September 16, 1902, after the renaming of the company formed by the August 12, 1902 merger of the Rockford & Belvidere Electric Railway Co. and the Rockford Railway, Power & Light Co.

The Rockford & Belvidere constructed and operated a 14-mile line between its namesake cities, with service beginning on November 16, 1901. Rockford Railway was formed by the consolidation of street railway companies that dated back to a mule-car operation organized in 1880. Electric operations began in 1890.

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