Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 January 1906 — NEWS ABOUT NEW RAILROADS. [ARTICLE]

NEWS ABOUT NEW RAILROADS.

Saturday’s Indianapolis News has a long article, on its first page, jegarding the proposed Chicago .i Indianapolis &Evaqsville Railroad. The News treats the proposed road as though it was a certain sure ; thing, and question at all about it being built at |once. This is the road which has already received extended mention in this paper, in connection with its survey through this county. According to the News it is to be a geewhollicin big road, and is to start from Bine Island, 111,, and to traverse Indiana 11 < ni end to end and more than half way back again. A branch line is to hit Lake Michigan at Toleston, where its principal termitauß is to le. The main line is to run through Crown Point, Wheatfield, Medaryville, Logan - sport, Indianapolis and to end at Evansville, on the Ohio. Branches and laterals, sab-branches and sub-will-dash and dart and shoot about in every direction, until, as is claimed, every stone quarry and coal mine in the state is tapped, and most of the important cities reached. With its maximum grade, of three tenths and curves of three degrees, it is expected that the freight engines will haul about twice the ordinary load, and the passenger trains, run at about twice the ordinary speed. All of which, it must be admitted, sounds much like the prospectus of Boone “the path finder” of Black Diamond fame, of a number of years ago.'

Wm. Kenefick, of Kansas city, who is said to tgss a new railroad off his busy bands every once in a while, is president and main financial guy of the road and John B. Garter, president of the John B. < DarterjConstruction Company, is the secretary, and his company has the contract to build the road. The road is to be bonded for $50,000 >er mile to build it, which statement also has not a very reassuring sound. Still it is an an evident fact that whoever and whatever is behind the proposition, that it is someone with faith enough to be spending a lot of good money for surveys and other pre liminarj expenses, and that fact is some evidence of the reliability of the eompaDy.

Still another new railroad which Jasper county is interested in is ihe Indiana, Illinois & Minnesota, or the I. I. &M. road. A portion of this road was built* last year, from Rockford, to Momence, HI., and evidently by men with plenty of money to spend. This road has already been mentioned several times as an east and west possibility for Bensselaer. It has already been surveyed as far Morocco, and the Morrocco Courier says it is sure to be built to that town this year and thed to strike out east until it taps the Monon, either at Bens selaer or Reynolds, the latter place more likely, the Courier thinks because it can there cross two railroads with one crossing, instead of only one, as at Rensselaer. Though that to us seems a mighty poor reason why they should turn' down a good town in a good country for a poor town in a poor country. Nor does it seem likely from anything we have learned of the road before, which was that it is a kind of outer belt line around Chicago, that it should wander bo far from* its present distance from Chicago as to hit Reynolds. But be this as it may, we echo the Courier’s hope that the road can be iudaced to come to Rensselaer, for it would be a very valuable acquisition to our city.