Of Semaphores and Streets

Decades ago, it was a time when a large and powerful few were still a small and local many.  These would consolidate, merge, and slip away until what is found today are huge and encompassing.  In communication they are the AT&T and Verizons.  In retail they are the Amazons and Walmarts, the Lowes and the Home Depots.  In railroads, the Norfolk Southern and CSXT in the east, Union Pacific and BNSF in the west.  

A few others exist in and around these behemoths as well, like Kansas City Southern, Iowa Interstate and numerous short lines, although KCS has grown aggressively in and out of country.  Even now it looks to a merger with CN and has already assimilated the Meridian Speedway and works closely with Norfolk Southern moving containers across the I20 corridor between Shreveport and Atlanta.  

The bigness of what we see about us today hide the stories of the smaller and unique things that came before them.  Indiana was known for an impressive network of interurban lines and was a vast collection of railroad's biggest names from the 20th century.  The Big Four (NYC), Pennsy, Erie, Wabash, and Nickel Plate to name a few.  It was also home to unique smaller roads like the Monon that connected Chicago to Louisville and Indianapolis.


I have written of the Monon before, and remarked on their upper quadrant semaphore signals that stood so tall along the right of way.  Even through the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st, one could find them in use where CSX yet used the tracks.  They stood outside swift moving Cardinals of the day, flipping by the windows in the early morning darkness as little pools of light unlike any of the more modern signals that we've come to know.  

The story of the Monon matches many other things.  At one time, unique and small, known for its own selection of passenger trains and unique street running through different Indiana towns.  In 1971 it was purchased by the Louisville and Nashville, giving the L&N access to Chicago.  From there it became "Family Lines" and then part of CSXT.  It has been paired down relentlessly with only a few sections remaining in place and in use.  Semaphores that remained active into the 2000s have been removed, but can still be found if you visit the museum in Linden, IN (above).


In Greencastle (above) the rails are in place, but stop not far south.  The evidence of an important rail corridor, however, can not be hidden.  Bits and pieces of continuous weld mark the right of way, and the old sentries put in place more than 100 years before still watch the path.  The glistening silver paint is gone, the blades themselves removed and yet there is no mistaking these for what they are.  No more Thoroughbreds pass this way on their sprint to Louisville, but it is not hard to imagine them in a scene with relics like this.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Place Where She Only Sleeps

Image
 Location: MP 1566.8 Grant-Kohrs Ranch Not far from Deer Lodge, headed west on the transcon we arrive here, at Grant-Kohrs Ranch where the Resourceful Railroad only sleeps.  Instead of empty right of way and scattered gravel, steel rail still binds the land in this place that is unlike the many other hundreds of miles along Lines West.  Across the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, on federal Park lands, the railroad only seems to rest and slumber while waiting for a new time to come.  Against the backdrop of Montana clouds that hold no rain, the catenary poles can still be found here standing against the endless skies.  The lineside poles that mark an era of railroading now gone still hold to the right of way.  It is not hard to imagine them whipping by outside the windows of an Olympian under the electrified power of a Quill or Joe.  Perhaps an XL Special could easily whisk across the scene above as though decades had never passed. Things don't seem so forgotten or beyond hope in a place like th
Read more

Buried

Image
 Location:  Near Bear Mouth, MT 1603 miles west of Chicago The daylight is fading away in the photo above - in the space that has been cut by the Clark Fork River.  Here one finds the Milwaukee heading to Bearmouth, MT, making its way steadily west.  Still marking the path is the former NP (Montana Rail Link at the time this photo was taken) and not far away, empty tunnels that lie in unchanging darkness.  The searchlight signal of the old NP shows a high green along the steel rails still present, a lonely sentinel in a sad and lonely place. The signatures of Milwaukee were fading even during the time of this photo, now itself 20 years old.  The gravel road preserves what was the right-of-way but telegraphy and other markers were quickly falling even then.   Traveling along I90 is now a trip through forgotten history and gravesites.  Where bridges once crossed the old transcontinental, fill has taken their place.  No more insulator panels that guard the roads above from the electrical
Read more

Summer Skies and Fading Paint

Image
On the way out of Deer Lodge, the Milwaukee Road rolled west by a fuel rack and two depots that bounded it north and south.  To the south of the rails was the freight depot, shown above and below.  Note the telegraphy pole that rises through the roof at the west end.  One can scroll back through the decades online and find it, always present, rising right through the eve of the old freight house.   Those decades weren't kind to the old house either.  The white paint has washed and faded away, the wooden shingles are increasingly missing.  When these pictures were taken in the early 2000s, the end was very near.  To the north of the former main, the passenger depot has taken on a new life as a church, but no such rebirth has come to the old freight house.  Under the hot Montana sun, the remaining paint continues to fade away and soon the house, the loading dock, and the telegraphy pole that always seemed to rise through the roof will vanish from under these blue skies. To the north
Read more