Even as Burlington officials were approving construction of the new depot at Sheridan ( Wyoming ), they were suddenly and unexpectedly faced with an immediate need for a new depot and division office building at Galesburg, the bustling hub of Lines East, for on April 27, 1911, the classic Victorian brick depot there ( Galesburg's second Burlington depot, complete with a striking but purely ornamental tower that made it one of the city's tallest structures ) was gutted by fire, leaving nothing standing but a shell of scorched brick walls.

Noted architect Heny Raeder was retained to design the replacement structure. Two stories tall, but topped by a low, tiled-covered hip roof that made it appear tall, the depot measured an impressive 64 feet 3 inches wide and 233 feet long, its footprint encompassing 14,800 square feet. Constructed of brownish red brick manufactured locally by Purington Brick Company ( best known for the brick pavers used on Line East depot platforms ) the structure was erected just north of the Seminary and South Street site of the old depot, and its construction occupied the latter part of 1911 and virtually all of 1912. Completed at a cost of estimated by the railroad at $150,000.00 - plus and by local sources at closer to $225,000.00, the new depot was formally dedicated in early 1913.

By the time the Burlington Northern was created in 1970, the Galesburg Division no longer existed, and all Lines East dispatching had been done from a consolidated facility near Clyde Yard near Cicero, Illinois for two years. A building as large as the 622,000 cubic-foot Galesburg depot was costly to maintain and expensive to heat in the winter, particularly for the minimal use the railroad was getting from it. Consequently as the BN began developing plans for an $80 million expansion and modernization of its facilities in Galesburg - plans that would include razing the power plant that furnished steam to heat the depot - the 1912 building became a liability to the railroad. The city wanted to save the structure and investigated ways this might be accomplished. But in the end, the building's great size was its own downfall. Even if the railroad had given the structure to the city, heating and maintaining it in its current condition would have been prohibitively expensive. And renovating it, installing a new heating system, and bringing the other utilities up to code, would have been just as costly, with all the expense incurred up front before any of the benefits could be realized. Consequently, with little advance warning, the railroad undertook demolition of the historic structure in May 1983, 71 years after the massive depot entered service, and Galesburg lost a major landmark.

Dwarfed even by the freight cars it is switching, the diminutive No. 100 works the Galesburg yard during 1929, shortly after its purchase. Inefficient in this service, the Mack was soon relegated to the Galesburg tie plant, where it put in over 20 years of uneventful service. Hol also included the following detailed history of the Mack:

When the Q sought to buy its first internal combustion locomotive for switching service in 1928, it turned to none other than Mack again ( having earlier purchased gas-electric motorcar 501 in 1922 ), because EMC had nothing to offer in the switcher field. What the railroad got was a tiny 30-ton, rigid frame, four-wheel, center-cab gas-electric locomotive just over 16' long. Powered by a pair of four-cylinder. 85-hp Mack truck engines, the diminutive switcher utilized General Electric electrical equipment - generators and traction motors. Cooling radiators were mounted atop the cab roof instead of the more common "winter-front" position at the ends of the hoods. Built by Mack at its Plainfield, NJ plant in November 1928 ( c/n 172001 ), the locomotive was the first model AW turned out ( only three others followed ), and was used as a demonstrator. The Q acquired it on March 20, 1929, after testing it extensively in yard and industrial switching service at Lincoln, NE. Numbered 100, the little 170-hp center-cab machine was painted solid Pullman green with gold numbers and CB&Q initials. Immediately the 100 was assigned to Galesburg, where it worked industrial trackage and the railroad's tie plant. Designed to exert 18,000 pounds of tractive force at 30% adhesion below one mile per hour, 7,000 pounds at five miles an hour, and 4,000 pounds at 10 mph, the 100 supposedly could haul 650 tons at nine miles per hour on level track or 200 tons on a 1% grade at a lower speed. This made the locomotive inefficient in all but the lightest switching chores, so by the early 1930's the 100 was assigned strictly to the Galesburg tie plant ( and equipped with large buffer plates ). Beginning in 1932, 9000-series numbers were assigned to Q gas-electric ( and soon diesel-electric ) switching power, but the tiny 100, confined to the tie plant, was not renumbered to 9100 until October 1939. And it kept the number for just one year, because the operation department decided to differentiate tie plant switchers with their own numbers so that some unknowing dispatcher wouldn't inadvertently try to assign the little machines to regular switching duties. And so, in October 1940, the Mack AW assumed its third and final number: 8900. It continued its uneventful and little photographed life in the Galesburg tie plant until finally, in August 1952, the nearly 24-year-old locomotive was retired and scrapped.