Thanks for sharing the video. It\'s a shame that the museum\'s one-time connection to the outside world via the interchange with the Illinois was taken out some two decades ago-without permission of the museum-by the Chicago, Central, & Pacific-now part of IC/CN.
You can still see the track where it leaves the main Fox River Trolley Museum \"mainline\" and curves sharply uphill towards the CN/IC/CC&P line just west of the bridge over the Fox River. A yard was based at the foot of the hill with up to three tracks for storing cars of coal and other commodities.
The Aurora, Elgin, & Fox River Electric (AE&FRE) split from the CA&E in the 1920s and the AE&FRE operated the Fox Valley Lines between West Dundee on the north and Yorkville on the south. When passenger operations were dropped in the 1930s a three mile segment of track survived to deliver coal to the Elgin mental hospital near Rt. 20 and Rt. 31 from the IC interchange. Eventually the AE&FRE remnant dieselized then itself disappeared when the hospital converted to natural gas from coal. The museum group acquired this freight line, selling off for scrap the section north of the current museum grounds, then expanding service south.
