RAIL South will travel approximately 165 miles in one day from St. Louis, MO to Vincennes, IN.
The RAIL South route includes part of Illinois that has a long history and as you ride along it you will parallel older alignments of the roads in several places. For example, I-64 was originally supposed to follow the general path of US 50 from St. Louis to Vincennes but the route was modified before all but a short section on both sides of the Indiana-Illinois border was built. This is clearly evident on our route from Lebanon to Carlyle, where new US 50 is effectively an unfinished four lane divided expressway. Overpasses are wide enough to accommodate two more lanes, but that’s not the most telling sign. Remarkably, and mind-bogglingly, wherever a bridge was needed, two were built alongside each other. In each case one is used, the other was abandoned and has stood unused for more than 35 years.
East of Flora and just after Clay City you will ride past three old abandoned steel truss bridges in a row within two miles which amazingly were open through the mid 1990’s. There are also thin traces of the previous iterations of US 50 paved with cement to the north and south of US 50.
Past that it will be clear sailing through the relatively flat, rich farmland and coal country of south central Illinois.