James Frederick Joy later extended the network to the Mississippi River as far as Burlington and Quincy by acquiring smaller railroad companies.

Subsequently, it expanded with the new Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) to St. Paul in the north, St. Louis in the south, and the Missouri River as far west as Kansas City and Omaha and beyond.

Joy created one of the most successful railroad companies of the 19th century in America, whose most important junction between the north-south and east-west connections was the city of Galesburg in Illinois.

In addition to a freight and passenger station, a large railroad depot with several roundhouses was built here, and was further expanded with the increase in rail traffic at the beginning of the 20th century.

[1] In addition, in 1905 the CB&Q built a large marshalling yard south of it, which extended over five kilometers along the connection to Quincy in the southwest.

In 1970, the CB&Q merged with several other companies to form the Burlington Northern Railroad (BN), which modernized the marshalling yard again in the early 1980s.

[7] As part of the conversion, the old depot at the northern end of the marshalling yard, including the roundhouse, was also demolished and replaced by a modern maintenance shed for diesel locomotives.

[8] In 1995, the BN merged with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to form today's BNSF Railway (Burlington Northern Santa Fe), which expanded the Galesburg Yard several times due to its importance for the newly created network, while retaining the existing layout of the track fields.