Nomad of Mid-America
The Old Town of Newman
Newman, Douglas County, Illinois. Population 778. Within its city limits you'll find all the ingredients for a quintessential Illinois hamlet. Quiet brick-and-mortar mainstreet, grain elevator complex, railroad splicing through the center. An unerring formula for small towns all across the Prairie State. The corn and soy crops encroaching on Newman's borders serve as the primary economic driver, as they do for a wide majority of Illinois' 58k square miles. Watco's aptly-named Decatur and Eastern Illinois Railroad earns its keep transporting the region's farm product to market, utilizing former B&O rails spun off from CSX in 2018 to forward large quantities of agricultural goods east from the processing epicenter of Decatur. The rails through Newman are hot on this unseasonably warm winter morning with DREI's eastbound road train #101, its pair of flares moving another 9 carloads towards points east via the CSX interchange at Terre Haute, IN.
The Old Town of Newman
Newman, Douglas County, Illinois. Population 778. Within its city limits you'll find all the ingredients for a quintessential Illinois hamlet. Quiet brick-and-mortar mainstreet, grain elevator complex, railroad splicing through the center. An unerring formula for small towns all across the Prairie State. The corn and soy crops encroaching on Newman's borders serve as the primary economic driver, as they do for a wide majority of Illinois' 58k square miles. Watco's aptly-named Decatur and Eastern Illinois Railroad earns its keep transporting the region's farm product to market, utilizing former B&O rails spun off from CSX in 2018 to forward large quantities of agricultural goods east from the processing epicenter of Decatur. The rails through Newman are hot on this unseasonably warm winter morning with DREI's eastbound road train #101, its pair of flares moving another 9 carloads towards points east via the CSX interchange at Terre Haute, IN.