In the mid 1850's, the Illinois Central Railroad Company's steam locomotive known as “American Standard” was popular, and later ran from Decatur to Champaign. Early locomotives burned wood, which railroads often bought from local landowners, and crews frequently asked passengers to help load fuel at simple platforms beside a landowner's timber, while water was stored in a tank by the Sangamon River. Traveling at fifteen to twenty miles per hour, trains moved much faster than the horses and stagecoaches they replaced. Before railroads reached Piatt County, Abraham Lincoln and other circuit lawyers followed buffalo trails that became Indian trails and later roads formed by oxen dragging timbers. Lincoln strongly supported railroads for the advantages they would bring to central Illinois; he began as a lobbyist for the Illinois Central and from 1853 to 1860 handled many Illinois Central cases in the Eighth Judicial Circuit. In the 1850's he also advocated the Northern Cross railroad, hoping it would pass through Centerville in Piatt County across central Illinois to connect western and eastern Illinois, but that vision was not fulfilled. The Northern Cross later merged with other railroads and ultimately became the Wabash line running from Springfield through Decatur and Bement, the only line in Piatt County that Lincoln used while riding the circuit and later campaigning there. Between 1856 and 1875, many Illinois railroads existed only on paper as proposed ventures seeking local support, land rights, and wealthy backing, and small towns such as Centerville prospered or declined according to railroad routes. In 1866 Centerville had a post office, thirty houses, assorted businesses, and 200 residents. Lincoln supported both routing the Northern Cross through Centerville and making it the new state capital. In 1869 a law allowed townships to vote bonds to attract railroads, and Sangamon Township voted to provide $40,000 to the company that would build the first line through the township. The Illinois Central then operated a branch from Champaign through White Heath and Monticello. Centerville gradually declined after White Heath was established at the junction of the Monticello Railroad and Havana Line. The first train ran from Monticello to Champaign in January 1872, and part of that branch line is now owned and maintained by the Monticello Railway Museum.