About Chicago, Missouri and Western Railway
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Incorporated in Illinois on February 13, 1986, Chicago, Missouri and Western Railway Company—CM&W, reporting mark CMNW—was a Venango River Corporation subsidiary created to buy and operate rail lines in Illinois and Missouri. Its documented Chicago address was 307 North Michigan Avenue.
On April 28, 1987, CM&W acquired 631 miles of former Illinois Central Gulf trackage and related rights. The system linked the railroad gateways of Chicago, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; and Kansas City, Missouri, and handled intermodal freight, grain, food products, steel, petroleum, chemicals, plastics, and aggregates. A compact regional railroad with a very large geographic appetite: classic railroading optimism, with invoices attached.
The purchase was heavily financed from the start. CM&W filed for Chapter 11 railroad reorganization on April 1, 1988, less than a year after beginning operations. Service continued under a trustee while the railroad’s routes and rights were marketed and divided rather than disappearing in one cinematic puff of diesel smoke.
Bankruptcy sales beginning in 1989 split the system. Southern Pacific’s SPCSL Corporation obtained the Chicago–East St. Louis route, while Gateway Western acquired key western segments toward Kansas City. The corporate enterprise’s operating era concluded around 1990, but the old Alton-route geometry kept carrying freight under later owners.
Our Chicago, Missouri and Western Railway collection celebrates a briefly ambitious Midwest bridge line: Chicago grit, Missouri mileage, bright locomotives, and the kind of leveraged railway comeback story that arrived at the depot with a one-way ticket.