By Laura McElroy, Daily Journal; March 14, 2019
The clock read 9:48 p.m. on Monday, March 15, 1999. Time stood still for one brief moment, and then, everything changed.
Darkness engulfed the frozen landscape of the northern edge of Bourbonnais on that evening when the Amtrak train, The City of New Orleans, headed southbound from Chicago, collided at the McKnight Road railroad crossing with a semitrailer loaded with 22 tons of steel.