In the beginning.....

The Pioneer was preserved by the C&NW Railroad, later donated to the Chicago Historical Society

It was a humble beginning.  Chicago was a late arrival to the railroad mania that was sweeping the Eastern part of the country.  The foundation of Chicago's rise to preeminence as the railroad center of the nation was a diminutive, used wood burning locomotive.  The Galena & Chicago Union Railroad was the brainchild of Former Mayor William B. Ogden.  When Ogden was in New York, he strongly advocated construction of the Erie Railroad and, after moving to Illinois, often discussed with businessmen the possibility of a railroad westward from Chicago. Most of Chicago was not interested in his railroad. The city's prosperity depended on shipping from the Great Lakes, the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and the network of plank roads in the city. Merchants told Ogden railroads would ruin the city, and he received little support from inside Chicago for constructing his railroad. Chicago's merchants defeated an ordinance that would have let the railroad come through Chicago. Nonetheless, he persevered.

He took his idea of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad to the farmers living along the plank road. He promised that they would prosper from the railroad because they would not have to go to town with all their goods. Ogden set out to connect the town of Galena to Chicago because Galena had lead mines.

The locomotive, renamed Pioneer, arrived by schooner in 1848.  Built by Baldwin in 1837 it had previously labored on the Utica & Schenectady and Michigan Central Railroads.  It was antiquated by the standards of the day.  The locomotive was quickly put to work carrying materials for construction of railroad.

On November 20, 1848 the railroad assembled a train of baggage cars with temporary seats, then invited dignitaries, politicians and the press on November 20, 1848 to take a free inaugural run west from Chicago. Returning from the area that became the suburb of Oak Park, the train hauled a farmer's load of wheat and hides as a demonstration.  The new railroad proved an instant success. Investors who had been reluctant to put their money into frontier railroads in 1847 stampeded to the new mode in 1850, and money poured in from as far away as Europe. By the eve of the Civil War, just 12 years after the Pioneer's first trip, Chicago was a terminal to 10 railroads and a network of track that stretched for 4,000 miles.

That network boosted Chicago's meatpacking, lumber, and commodities industries, as well as a host of other manufacturing and wholesale businesses. It created a string of suburbs for well-to-do residents who desired to flee the bustling city for the relative quiet of outlying towns from which they could easily commute on the train. It turned the city into the nation's transfer point, with 25 million passengers funneling through the city's railroad stations in 1913.

The Galena & Chicago Union would become part of the Chicago & North Western Railroad.  It would never reach Galena.