Is your favorite main line now full of weeds and wild flowers? What abandonments have left you angry or shedding a tear?
Don’t miss the Map of the Month on the ACL+SAL merger in February 2005 TRAINS .
The only abandonment of a railroad that hasn’t left me sad is the abandonment of the underground railway due to the abolition of slavery.
But, to answer the question, IC’s Springfield - St. Louis abandonment has to be the one that hit the hardest for me.
Gabe
P.S. Kudos on the map of the month. I enjoyed it (an IC/GM&O one like that would be really cool).
I went back to my hometown of Indianapolis this past weekend and was reminded once again of the B&O line that ran through the city and out through the western 'burbs like Speedway and Brownsburg. Unfortunately it has been abandoned for some time now with seeming little hope of making anything out of it at all. I remember trains running on that line behind my grandparents farm house when I was just a kid. Even got to see a steam excursion every once in a while. That’s the line I miss most.
Mike
techguy57,
That line has always interested me a great deal. I wish it could have hung in there. I grew up in Central Illinois. I am familiar with where the line went. Now, I too live in Indianapolis.
When I go home I often trace its remnants and then have the pleasure of driving along side it when I get to Illinois. There was an interesting discusion about the remaining part of the line on this forum about three weeks ago.
Can you describe the steam excursions a little more? Where and when were they and what pulled them?
Gabe
P.S. My understanding is CSX runs the Decatur IL freight right into Avon yard by going over the C&EI line when it hits the Indiana State line and then on the old PC when it gets to Terre Haute?
I don’t have a favorite but I have seen one in Farmercity,IL that has some big weeds dose anyone know which line that is
kevin
Oh boy, a question I know the answer to.
It is currently run by NS. The current version of it that is still in existence runs from Bloomington IL, to Champain IL. I think it was once part of the NYC system as the Peoria and Eastern. I also think the line once extended to Danville.
It is funny you mention this line. I have examined it closely. There seems to be a bit of local on-line farm industry. Too bad trains don’t run on it any more. What I would have given to have enough money to start my dreamed of short line railway with this line. It is connected to a lot of lines and has a lot of farm industry.
Yet, I don’t claim to be an expert. If NS abandon it, chances are it couldn’t make money . . . I still would have liked to have found out for myself though. I think the weeds are so high now, you would virtually have to rebuild the line from scratch to run trains on it.
Gabe
Here in Kansas, there have been quite a few main and branch lines either torn out or just railbanked. The one that bothered me the most was the Former Missouri Pacific Colorado Main line From Kansas City, KS via Osawatomie, Herington and Hoisington to Pueblo, CO. which SP later used via DRGW rights for its central corridor. I can remember MP coal trains literely screaming(hence the name screaming eagles[:)] ) pass through, then SP manifest and coal trains pound through on this line, AC4400CWs and ABS signaling, CWR, so much ballast you had to crawl up it to reach the tracks. Then, I watched some of the last trains on it blast through at 50 60 MPH with the rail removal crew not to far behind[:(!] UP found the old Kansas Pacific route was a more efficient route for all cross state traffic, but I think it was to keep another operator putting together a new transcontinental. There are short sections of it still in use but around 500 miles of it torn out.
I’m with Gabe – I feel a pang every time I see or hear about an abandonment. “if a clod be washed away, Europe is the less…” (John Donne)
The old Seaboard line from Charleston to Savannah (would have made a TERRIFIC rails-to-trails; we didn’t even get THAT), C&WC into Beaufort/Port Royal (going…going…), Southern between Branchville & Augusta,…I could go on and on…
Well, on the bright side…
The CN (x-WC, nee-MILW) line from Saukville (WI) to Plymouth and the UP (x-CNW) line from Plymouth to Sheboygan Falls are really full of weeds and wild flowers, but fortunately the rails are still in, and a savior has been found – Wisconsin & Southern!
On the not-so-bright side, the same area also has another x-CNW line that did not escape the torch – the CNW Manitowoc line. Much of the r-o-w is visible from US 10 in Reedsville, Grimms, and Cato (where there’s a neat old grain elevator building that once was served by rail).
[:(][:)],
-Mark
http://www.geocities.com/fuzzybroken
The Arbutus Corridor in Vancouver is just wrapping up the abandonment process.
It’s a few miles and runs from False Creek to the Fraser River where it joins up with the Marpole Spur.
I only remember seeing very short trains (usually no more than a few cars) running up and down this line at a very young age. It’s an awsome right-of-way, cutting through many parts of Vancouver that are now all residential and light commercial, it really looks as though it doesn’t belong there nowadays.
It used to connect Downtown Vancouver with the Marpole spur, which would run out to Coquitlam, but Downtown Vancouver lost much rail traffic over the last few decades with the outgoing of Industrial lands and the incoming of Residential apartments and condos.
In the Last few years of operations late 90s to turn of the century, it only served one industry, the Molsen Brewery, and eventually Molsen switched to trucks (I believe at the request of CP) and the line has not seen any traffic the last 4-5 years. The tracks are still intact, but are all overgrown, and would likely not hold up to any rail traffic.
Too bad to see, but I suppose that’s just the way things go.
There’s still a small chance the right-of-way will be turned into some sort of a transit line, but that’s not looking like it’s going to happen anytime soon, CP would rather sell the line to realestate developers (obviously).
There are some other pics here:
http://www.savecambie.org/avc.htm
The old B&O west of Indy is a neat line. I like the overhead crossing of the PRR to Logansport just east of Country Club Road in Indy. Other than that the ex NKP through Edwardsville, Il. I watched long N & W trains rumble over this track as a young kid, then a local and finally a coal train. The tracks are gone and the whole area around LeClaire Tower is just a memory. Coming back to Indy…my favorite almost abandoned line is the ex NKP line used by the Indiana Transportation Musueum.
Not so much a fave, but I did ride the Erie from Chicago to BinghamtonNY in the early 60s. Don’t remember much at all, but it was depressing seeing all those post-Conrail articles with the deteriorated right of way across Indiana (Erie Western), and later hearing most was pulled up. Read about the line again in Carpenter’s 1946 atlas…
Gabe: The Peoria & Eastern is where you are at. NS has started the abandonment game with the Bloomington-Mansfield portion along I-74. Be aware that there is a game going on with this rascal and NS is waiting to play the trump card… Another part of it east of Danville is now the Vermillion Valley RR…Chunks of the P&E in Champaign-Urbana have also passed the abandonment test and are in NITU negotiation.
Rusty: The Colorado portion of the Hoisington Sub is intact (CDOT owned, CK&P just defaulted on payments to it) Watco runs the surviving portions of it in Western KS as the K&O…
The B&O/CI&W line over the Wabash River (Hillsdale-Montezuma, neat through-truss bridge!) is in NITU negotiation. Local business failed to realize the value of the line and drove the railroad to abandon, the truckers are free now to gouge and it’s their own fault. nstephenson probably probably saw the crossing frog in the weeds at Hillsdale and wonders where the stub track east of his railroad went to.
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Milwaukee - Miles City MT to Seattle - actually much of the ex-Milw in Washington, Idaho, and western Montana is either recreational trail, Forest Service road, or local access road, even a golf course, and of course a few sections of original trackage are still intact and in use. But there are still a few weed and wild flower covered portions from Plummer ID west to the Washington state line, the removed viaduct over Cow Creek in central Washington (just west of the UP overpass at Marengo), and the former ROW by Rock Lake WA that is still under private ownership.
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SP&S from Fish Lake WA to Pasco - again, most of this is or is going to be recreational trail, but still under development or in the planning stages, and the sharp ballast through the Scablands of Washington has become covered in sagebrush and wild sunflowers.
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UP’s former Yakima WA branch - okay, so not a mainline, but still a usually fairly busy line, one of the local railroads of my childhood growing up in Sunnyside WA, it passed through the irrigated farmlands of the Yakima Valley right by my best friend’s house (thus a good excuse for a sleepover!)
How bout the nearby Illinois terminal RR ?
Randy
May I have a brief moment of silence for the IT?
Actually, the IT was more or less out of the game about a year before I could remember it. Well, sort of, I can remember the IT running on the IC just barely. But, I have heard so many stories from my Dad about 100+ IT car trains winding their way through the streets (literally street running) of several small southern Illinois towns. What I would give to see just one of them. It really seemed like a neat railroad. I wish I could have seen more than its swansong.
Gabe
Seaboard Coastline had a line running from Waycross to Tifton which had a good bit of traffic. As it ran through Willacoochee, site of the No Name Bar which was humorist Lewis Grizzard’s favorite watering hole, it crossed Central of Georgia tracks which connected Douglas with (I think) Valdosta. First these were taken up by the late '70s. Then SCL (or CSX) decided it could do without it tracks between the town to the east of Willacoochee, Pearson, and Tifton. This left only a short spur from Waycross to pearson. I used to travel that way between Waycross and my parents home in Atlanta and loved to see the trestles spanning the various rivers and creeks along the way. I wish I had stopped to get a few pix of some of my favorite spots. But, you know how that goes; always too busy and in a hurry.
Jock Ellis
Cumming, GA US of A
My answer is No. My favorites are doing fairly well. However one of my favorite abandoned lines actually has over 50 miles of an eight foot wide strip of black top. The long abandoned PRR line that follows the little Miami river in Ohio has to be one of the better ROW trails in the country.
Jay
IT-the railroad just down the street-literally. What I remember is trains running mostly on trackage rights, but on the old T & E line they still ran their own, long, slow trains through Edwardsville. Some would then go north on the CNW to Monterey Mine-those were neat trains, BN locomotives one one end, IT loco on the other-no caboose. I assume it was cut off at Federal Yard in Alton. I wish I cold have seen the IT on the belt around Edwardsville, along US 66 in Hamel and through the streets of Worden, Mt Olive and Staunton. Must have been a sight to behold.I miss the freight hauling IT, and only wish I could have seen the passenger hauling version.
Started life as the Cincinnati, Lebanon & Northern (Narrow Gauge)…Santa Claus ought to get you Corneilius Hauck’s excellent “Little Giant” book on the life and death of that line…