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Northern Illinois Historical Railway Association, Inc.
| In 1846 a group of
Rockford leaders hoped to establish a railroad in the Rock River Valley. The RACINE, ROCKFORD and ROCK ISLAND was incorporated in 1857 to gain outlet to the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes to the east. Experiencing difficulties obtaining bonding for the indebtedness for initial construction costs, a group from Kenosha, Wisconsin invited a contingent of Rockford businessmen to consider their proposed line. The Kenosha group had been rebuffed in their efforts to extend their line to the Mississippi River by way of Beloit. The result was that the Kenosha line veered southwest from Genoa City to Hebron in Illinois into Harvard and on to Rockford. |
About this
time the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad emerged and absorbed many smaller
lines in the region. The R.R. & R.I. was one of these. The Galena &
Chicago R.R., which had reached Rockford as the first rail line west of
Chicago in 1851, was also absorbed. From then until its demise, the
Kenosha to Rockford railroad was known as the K-D Line. The setting for the model railroad is in the Paulson Agricultural Museum located in Argyle, Illinois. The museum depicts life as represented by the machinery manufactured by the Emerson/ Brantingham Manufacturing Co. in Rockford...a descendant of the Manny Reaper Co. |