Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1903 — ALONG GIFFORD’S ROAD. [ARTICLE]

ALONG GIFFORD’S ROAD.

There is still something doing along Gifford’s railroad, and indications are that muoh more will be in the spring. He has a Work train in regular use, besides the regular passenger and freight train, and is hauling in sand on the grade at the Kankakee river, and is preparing to bridge that stream, The traok is now laid to the river. He has recently stated that he expects to build 15 miles of road on the Chicago extension this year. The long hitch with tbe Monon over oonneoting with that road at McCoysburg with a Y has been adjusted. The situation there has been full of difficulties. Tbe Mouon’s side track there is south of the main track, and they would not let Gifford put a Y in the main traok, so he had to build aocross the traok and put his Y into the side traok on the south side. And this

the Monon would not permit onless be would put in an interlocking switch and hire a man to watch it, with the consequent heavy expense and light returns. This was, in a figurative sense, pretty nearly putting Uncle Ben between the d-1 and the deep sea. At last, however, the trouble is reliably stated to have been compromised. The Monon and Gifford together are to build a station at the junction point, and above this is to be the interlocking switch tower, and both companies will have a joint agent who will also work the switch. The station

ViMcCoysburg will be moved up totfte new one. To which we might add, that it needs a higher point of view than any switoh tower to catch a sight of Gifford’s road coining down the pike towards Rensselaer. The expected mail-carrying service on the Gifford line has not yet gone into effect. It was expected when the road was inspected and - everything found satisfactory that mail-carrying would begin about the first of the year, but for some reason the matter is still delayed. In this connection we give on this page a map of the Gifford railroad, present, proposed and possible, for which we are under obligations to the Indianapolis News. Along with the map, as it appeared in the News, was a fine rtiole from W, H. Blodgett, discribing the Gifford railroad ditches, oil and onion fields eto. There is not much in the artiole however that would be new or interesting to our readers, exoept what they can get out of the map. The map is very complete and correct in the mair, but has one or two inaccurances cr omissions. Thus the complete branch line from Gifford .into the oil fields is shown on the map as only a proposed line. And the town of Asphaltum, at the end of this line, is not shown at all. it is somewhere inside the elliptical oil field shown in the map.