I am new to the forum, and I was wondering if I had read correctly that the C&EI was part of the Frisco for at least a while. Is this correct? If so, what years was the C&EI part of the Frisco. My Granfather worked on the C&EI from the 1920s until perhaps the 50s or 60s. I am trying to get info about the C&EI.
Probably the most info on the C&EI is probably going to be available from the Missouri Pacific Historical Society. Tom
Wikipedia has an outline of the C&EI's history, although some of the information is at odds with one of the links there. The Frisco controlled the C&EI from 1902 to the early 1920's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_and_Eastern_Illinois_Railroad
As an interesting side note, the C&EI interchanged directly with the Frisco in St Louis as apposed to using TRRA as it did with other roads. This is illustrated in the Morning Sun book Trackside in St Louis. Brad
Scott, Also recommend the following web sites http://www.ceihs.org/historians_frameset.html http://www.mopac.org/ Hope this helps. Thanks! Mark
The C&EI was controlled by the Frisco during the early 1900s when B.F. Yoakum controlled the Frisco and the Rock Island. It was part of his plan to put together a network of railroads reaching from Chicago to Mexico, the same plan that led the Frisco to back the construction of the St. Louis Brownsville & Mexico to Brownsville, TX, and the Fort Worth & Rio Grande southwest of Fort Worth. Unfortunately, Yoakum's plans fell apart about 1913, and the Frisco lost control of both the C&EI and the StLB&M, both of which eventually became part of the MoPac. There's an academic journal article that your friendly local librarian might be able to track down: "The Frisco Period of the C&EI : a study in early twentieth century railway geography", by Douglas Munski, which was published in The North Dakota Quarterly, vol 48, no 1 (Winter 1980). It focuses on business and financial matters, as academic journal articles about railroads generally do. WorldCat indicates that there have been a couple of graduate theses published about the history of the C&EI, one by the same Douglas Munski mentioned above, but again you would probably have to track them down through a library.
