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Illmo Beanery
Prior to the early 1960’s, crews operating between Dupo and Poplar Bluff, and Dupo and Paragould, AR, changed at Gale, IL. In June 1950, a previous agreement (dating to 1927) was revised outlining separate crew pools for trains running through Gale. A side letter to this agreement stated that MP would continue the practice of furnishing crews “on trains first and second 67, 65, 361, Gulf Coast Blocks 360, 72, and 60 with two meat sandwiches, pie and coffee or milk not to exceed a cost of 80 cents, when the engines of such trains do not have to be serviced at Gale or the train does not have to be switched.”
In the early 1960’s (prior to 1964 but I do not have an exact date), MP elimated Gale as a crew change point and established the beanery at Illmo to provide lunches to crews operating Dupo-Poplar Bluff and Dupo-Paragould. At this time, lunches were handed up to all trains. This service was for MP only, it did not involve Cotton Belt. When the C&EI was folded in, crews in the Salem-Poplar Bluff pool also got lunch. The practice continued into the UP era until the implementation of the St. Louis Hub Agreement in November of 1999, when it was specifically written out of the agreement. In 1993, the owners were Bob Camp Jr and BL Wheeler. Camp was a 43-yr employee with MP and UP before retiring in 1988. Wheeler was a retired engineer.
Crews phoned their orders in at Poplar Bluff or Dupo, giving their train symbol. As southbound trains came over the Thebes Bridge, or northbound trains crossed the Frisco at Rockview, they would call their symbol and location over the radio on the road channel. The beanery staff were listening to the road channel with a scanner. The lunches were prepped, bagged and put into baskets, which were set onto the swinging platforms as seen in the photos. Headend and rear end crews snagged the baskets, extracted their lunch bags, and tossed the baskets to the ground.
I cannot provide photos with MP locos getting lunch at Illmo, but here are two of my photos of a northbound UP train picking up lunch in 1991. This should help illustrate the operation. Also an uncredited photo from Facebook taken on a Mopac train in the 1970s.
