In 1869 the Ottawa Oswego and Fox Valley Rail Road approached Dayton landowners to acquire the right-of-way for a railway line through Dayton. The OO&FVR line started operation in 1871. This Dayton map from the 1876 La Salle County atlas shows the route the railroad took through the village.

The chart below is a railroad map, a condensed profile of the railroad infrastructure most useful to civil engineers, namely gradient, curvature, crossings at grade, overpasses, underpasses, culverts and bridges. In order to be able to read the markings, it has been turned so that south is at the top. Going up means going toward Ottawa.

The red arrow points to the trestle bridge over Washington street, shown in the picture below. It is a 6 span bridge, made of 20 foot I-beams.

The next three grade crossings (in the green box) correspond, in the map above, to Franklin street, Jackson street, which leads up and out to the west to Route 23, and O’Connell street, which leads west and becomes the Dayton lane. There was no crossing at La Fayette street.

The numbers in the column to the left of the tracks show the distance from the origin in Chicago. The line pointed to by the blue arrow shows the height in feet above sea level. Notice that it shows a slight grade going up to the north. In the winter, with water, snow, or ice on the tracks, we could definitely hear the train laboring and slipping as it worked its way north.

The railroad went through a number of incarnations. It was sold to the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy in 1899. The CB&Q merged into the Burlington Northern in 1970. BN subsequently acquired the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, forming the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway, whose name was later simplified to BNSF Railway. The one-time Ottawa Oswego & Fox Valley Railway was sold by BNSF to the Illinois RailNet in 1999. In 2005, the latter railroad became Illinois Railways.

I owe many thanks to Jon Roma, for all his railway knowledge and his patience in explaining it to me. Any errors in the above are due to me, not to Jon.