Railroad

The Big Boy No. 4014 is the world's largest operating steam locomotive. It's 133 feet long, approximately the length of three school buses end-to-end, and is hauling a set of cars with "America 250" displayed on the sides behind it.

As Central Illinois swelters in the summer heat, most people have someplace to go to cool off. Not so long ago, it wasn't like that. 1934 was the year air conditioning came to Bloomington-Normal.

There are still a lot of details to work through with a prospective contractor on the Uptown Normal underpass project for another revised bid, and with state, federal, and railroad partners. City Manager Pam Reece has more to say in a WGLT interview.

The updated tentative price to build the Uptown underpass project in Normal is about $33.7 million. That is above the roughly $32 million bid approved in November. The previous winning bidder withdrew over concerns about timing and its ability to meet the cost.

The decade-old Underpass project in Uptown Normal has had another hitch. The contractor, Millstone-Weber, said it can't meet the requirements and construction timeline and has pulled out.

How does society do hard things? In this first part of our new series "Hard Things," WGLT unpacks the generational project that brought faster passenger train service to Illinois.

The Town of Normal is still in watch and wait mode as the Trump administration aggressively cuts programs and federal agency staff.

The bids for the long-awaited underpass project beneath the railroad tracks in Uptown Normal have come back. The low bid is $35.16 million.

Gov. JB Pritzker recently voiced support for the Chicago Hub Improvement Program (CHIP), a plan that also holds promise for Amtrak service through Bloomington-Normal. The investment in transportation infrastructure would fix several problems at Union Station and connect it to two potential passenger-focused main lines.

The federal government has signed off on higher speed Amtrak passenger trains between Chicago and St. Louis, running through Bloomington-Normal, completing more than three decades of effort to bring high-speed rail to the state and the nation's passenger rail service.