Preserving Our History

Museums | Documenting | Community | Authors & Press | Railroad Equipment

The Blackhawk Chapter has an extensive track record of involvement in numerous railroad preservation or railroad-themed community projects throughout Chicagoland and Northern Indiana.

Are you restoring a piece of railroad equipment? Did your ancestors work for the railroad? Want to know more about that railroad running through your town? The Blackhawk Chapter can connect you with the people and resources that will answer your questions.

Click on the links above or scroll down to see how the Blackhawk Chapter and its members are preserving our area's railroad history:

Photo CD-ROMs

The Blackhawk Chapter has produced a series of CD-ROMs featuring digital reproductions of photos an papers from their archives.

Images of the Rock Island features over 100 images from the Blackhawk Chapter archives of the Rock Island from Chicago to Joliet.

Images of the Chicago & Western Indiana features timetables, postcard images and and rare pictures of the C&WI and its owner railroads in and around Chicago's Dearborn Station.

The Blackhawk Chapter's is the exclusive producer of
Images of the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern, Volumes 1, 2 & 3,
a series of CD-ROMs featuring photographs and drawings from the Blackhawk Chapter archives documenting the railroad that goes “Around, not thru, Chicago.”

DVDs

The Blackhawk Chapter has preserved a set of 16mm films of the EJ&E's complete right-of-way, filmed in the early 1970s and has started releasing them DVD format.

Books

The Blackhawk Chapter reprinted the 1854 book covering the organization of the Joliet & Northern Indiana, which later became the Michigan Central's “Joliet cutoff.” This material has been unavailable for over 150 years and provides a rare inside look at America's early railroad era.