Sunfield, Illinois N-Trak Module

In 2001, I had recently switched from modeling the Union Pacific to the Illinois Central and was looking around for a suitable location to create a somewhat prototype based mid-western N-Trak module.  The answer was a mere twelve miles from home in rural Perry county Illinois, the area known as Sunfield.   In the heyday of the Illinois Central’s double tracked mainline, Sunfield was at the north end of a center siding that continued down to the St. Louis and Eldorado districts branching off in DuQuoin, approximately two miles to the south.  A spur to one of the numerous strip mines in the area diverged to the east at the location of the Sunfield Grain Company’s elevator.  US Highway 51 parallels the Illinois Central mainline in this part of southern Illinois, and makes for a good venue to follow trains on a great fall day.

Illinois Central single tracked the "Mainline of Mid-America" in the late 1980’s, and Sunfield still retained its role as the north end of the long siding for DuQuoin as well as the unique center siding. Currently operated by CN, the rails through Sunfield still see the passage of 12-15 coal, grain and manifest trains each day as well as Amtrak’s City of New Orleans, Saluki and Illini services to Chicago.

The original grain elevator was kit-bashed from a Walthers wooden grain elevator kit, and had a few minor details added to more favorably resemble the Sunfield Grain Company structure. The grain elevator has not loaded cars in several years and the siding most recently has been used to store maintenance of way equipment and the occasional bad order car. A few random houses are located on Kimmel Road, just east of the Sunfield Grain property, and the houses on the module are only intended to be a reasonable facsimile thereof.