Illinois Central Railroad

The Illinois Central Railroad, sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, is a railroad company in the central United States that operated independently from 1851 to 1998 and is today owned and operated by the Canadian National Railway. Its primary routes connect Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, linking the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, with a line built in 1870 extending west to Sioux City, Iowa, and smaller branches reaching Sioux Falls and Omaha. Its construction was financed in part by a federal land grant, a method later used by several other long distance U.S. railroads, and after the Canadian National Railway acquired control in 1998 the Illinois Central Railroad continued to exist as a non-operating subsidiary. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/