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150 Years of Service - The Railroad O’Fallon has been served by several railroads throughout its history but the greatest of them all was its first and now the only one to survive. The CSXT R.R., which bisects our city, traces its lineage back to America’s first railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, on which construction first began in 1828 in Baltimore, Md. The building of a “rail road”, recently developed in England, was Baltimore’s attempt to regain western trade it was losing to canals. The B. & 0. would provide a connection to the Ohio River and the trade routes of the interior. It first reached Wheeling (W.Va.) on the Ohio in 1853, but plans were already in place to extend the line south of Wheeling to Cincinnati and then on to St. Louis. At Grafton (W.Va.), where the B. & 0. main line turned north to Wheeling, a line was built west to Parkersburg (W.Va.). Steamboats connected Parkersburg to Marietta (Ohio) which in turn was connected with Cincinnati by the Marietta & Cincinnati R.R. (M.& C.). The Ohio & Mississippi R.R. (O.& M.) would then connect Cincinnati with St. Louis via Vincennes. Ground for the 0. & M. was broken in Illinoistown (now E. St. Louis) on Jan. 7, 1852 with the first spadeful being turned by the 0. & M. western division president, John O’Fallon of St. Louis, and the second by eastern division president Abner Ellis of Vincennes. O’Fallon Station was built on the 0. & M. in 1854. By 1857, the line from St. Louis to Baltimore was opened, and on June 4 of that year the first train from the east arrived at Illinoistown to a huge celebration.
The combination of the B. & 0., M. & C. and 0. & M. was called the American Central Line and was a major trade and passenger route from the Mississippi River to the East coast. In 1893, the O. & M. merged into the B. & 0. Southwestern R.R. which was, in turn, acquired by the Chesapeake & Ohio (C. & 0. or Chessie System) in 1963 though both continued to operate separately. In 1980, the Chessie System merged with Seaboard Coast Line producing CSX Corp. In 1987, the B. & O. merged into the C. & O. and the C. & O. merged into CSX Transportation (CSXT), a division of CSX Corp., which continues to haul goods, though no longer passengers, through our town as it has for almost 150 years.
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