On April 28, 1987, Illinois Central Gulf, divesting itself of surplus lines to get itself down to a core system, sold the Kansas City line, and the Chicago (actually with ownership ending at Joliet, Illinois, then with trackage rights from there to Chicago via the Illinois Central Railroad) to East St. Louis mainline, to a new 633 mile regional, Chicago, Missouri and Western Railway.

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (ATSF) had always wanted an access to St. Louis.

In 1997, the GWWR and its Illinois subsidiary Gateway Eastern Railway were purchased by Kansas City Southern (KCS).

In 2022, during the hearings before the STB for the CP-KCS merger, Canadian National Railway (CNR), which had lost the battle against CP for the acquisition of KCS, presented a plan to acquire the GWWR line and thus create both via Springfield and via St. Louis, a new corridor between Kansas City and St. Louis with Michigan and Eastern Canada, bypassing Chicago, and which, according to the plan presented by CN, would divert 80,000 long-haul truck shipments to rail annually.

[3] The STB would ultimately reject plans submitted by CN to operate on the Springfield Line.