Wabash E8A 1012 with Train 4, The Wabash Cannonball, at the Danville, IL station on October 28, 1962.
(Roger Puta, courtesy Marty Bernard, railfan 44, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
WABASH RAILROAD
"Follow the Flag"
The Wabash Railroad (reporting mark WAB) was a Class I railroad that operated in the mid-central United States. It served a large area, including track in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Missouri and the province of Ontario. Its primary connections included Chicago, Illinois; Kansas City, Missouri; Detroit, Michigan; Buffalo, New York; St. Louis, Missouri; and Toledo, Ohio.
The Wabash's major freight traffic advantage was the direct line from Kansas City to Detroit, without going through St. Louis or Chicago. Despite being merged into the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) in 1964, the Wabash company continued to exist on paper until the N&W merged into the Norfolk Southern Railway (NS) in 1982.
At the end of 1960 Wabash operated 2,423 miles of road on 4,311 miles of track, not including Ann Arbor and NJI&I; that year it reported 6,407 million net ton-miles of revenue freight and 164 million passenger-miles.
Route map of the Wabash Railway with marking of double-tracked lines.
(Wabash Railroad Historical Society, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Origin of name
The source of the Wabash name was the Wabash River, a 475-mile (764 km)-long river in the eastern United States that flows southwest from northwest Ohio near Fort Recovery, across northern Indiana to Illinois where it forms the southern portion of the Illinois-Indiana border before draining into the Ohio River, of which it is the largest northern tributary. The name Wabash is an anglicization of the French name for the river, Ouabache. French traders named the river after the native Miami tribe's word for the river.
1886 system map.
(Wabash Railroad, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Corporate history
Merger tree
The Wabash Railroad resulted from numerous mergers or acquisitions as shown by this table:
• Norfolk Southern Railway (1982)
• Norfolk and Western Railway (1964)
• Wabash Railroad (1941)
• Wabash Railway (1931)
• Wabash Railroad (1889)
• Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway (1904–1908) later Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway
• Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad
• Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway (1879)
• Council Bluffs and St. Louis Railway (1877)
• Toledo, Wabash and Western Railway
• Great Western Railway of Illinois 1865
• Sangamon and Morgan Railroad 1853
• Northern Cross Railway 1847
• Illinois and Southern Iowa Railroad 1865
• Quincy and Toledo Railroad 1865
• Toledo and Wabash Railway 1865
• Wabash and Western Railroad 1958
• Toledo and Wabash Railroad 1858
• Toledo, Wabash and Western Railroad 1858
• Lake Erie, Wabash and St. Louis Railroad 1856
• Toledo and Illinois Railroad 1856
• Warsaw and Peoria Railroad 1865
Pre-Civil War
The name Wabash Railroad or Wabash Railway may refer to various corporate entities formed over the years using one or the other of these two names. The first railroad to use only Wabash and no other city in its name was the Wabash Railway in January 1877 which was a rename of the Toledo, Wabash and Western Railway formed on July 1, 1865. The earliest predecessor of the Wabash System was the Northern Cross Railroad, which was the first railroad built in Illinois.
The Toledo and Illinois Railroad was chartered April 20, 1853, in Ohio to build from Toledo on Lake Erie west to the Indiana state line. The Lake Erie, Wabash and St. Louis Railroad was chartered in Indiana on August 19 to continue the line west through Wabash into Illinois towards St. Louis, Missouri, and the two companies merged August 4, 1856, to form the Toledo, Wabash and Western Railroad with a total length of 243 miles.
The company soon went bankrupt and was sold at foreclosure. The Toledo and Wabash Railroad was chartered October 7, 1858, and acquired the Ohio portion October 8. The Wabash and Western Railroad was chartered on September 27 and acquired the Indiana portion on October 5. On December 15, the two companies merged as the Toledo and Wabash Railway. That company merged with the Great Western Railway of Illinois, the Illinois and Southern Iowa Railroad, the Quincy and Toledo Railroad and the Warsaw and Peoria Railroad to form the final Toledo, Wabash and Western Railway.
Cover of system timetable, 1887.
(Wabash Railroad, SPUI, via http://www.davidrumsey.com/ davidrumsey.com, via Wikimedia Commons)
Post-Civil War
It was this group of railroads that formed the beginning of the Wabash System with the rename in 1877.
Later mergers and reorganizations formed the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway on November 7, 1879, and Wabash Railroad on August 1, 1889. Financier John Whitfield Bunn was one of several capitalists who were instrumental in the consolidation of the Wabash System.
Preferred Share certificate of the Wabash Railroad Company, issued 17 January 1910.
(Unbekannte Autoren und Grafiker; Scan vom EDHAC e.V., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Early 20th century
In 1904, the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway was formed and acquired control of the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad, giving the Wabash access to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the final step in an attempt to break the near-monopoly of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) and New York Central Railroad for traffic to the east. However, the Wabash had overextended itself, and the WPT went bankrupt in 1908; it would later become part of the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway. The Wabash Railroad itself was sold at foreclosure July 21, 1915, and reorganized October 22 as the Wabash Railway.
The Pennsylvania Railroad acquired loose control of the Wabash in 1927 by buying stock through its Pennsylvania Company. In 1929 the Interstate Commerce Commission charged the PRR with violating the Clayton Antitrust Act. The ruling was appealed, and in 1933 the Circuit Court ruled that the control was for investment only and did not violate the act.
The Wabash Railway again entered receivership on December 1, 1931. The Wabash Railroad, controlled by the PRR, was organized in July 1941 and bought the Wabash Railway on December 1.
This wooden box car, owned by the Wabash Railroad, was built in the 1920s and assigned to the Studebaker plant in South Bend, Indiana.
(vxla from Chicago, US, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
In 1955, Wabash freight trains averaged 21.7 miles per hour, compared with a Class I average speed of 18.6 mph. Although the Wabash did not acquire it's first diesel-electric locomotive until 1949, by 1955 the line was entirely dieselized.
Misc. Statistics (1955)
| Item | Revenue |
|---|---|
| Freight Revenue | $104,012,922.00 |
| Passenger Revenue | $4,932,520.00 |
| Total Operating Income | $118,564,821.00 |
| Net Income | 15,844,920.00 |
Equipment Data (1955)
| Type | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Locomotives (units): | |
| Diesel-Electric - Freight | 142 |
| Diesel-Electric - Passenger | 22 |
| Diesel-Electric - Multi-purpose | 42 |
| Diesel-Electric - Switching | 110 |
| Total Locomotives: | 316 |
| Freight Cars: | |
| Box | 12,614 |
| Automotive Box (included in above figure) | 5,400 |
| Flat | 122 |
| Stock | 588 |
| Gondola and Hopper | 3,944 |
| Caboose | 227 |
| Total Freight Cars: | 17,495 |
| Passenger Cars: | |
| Coach | 61 |
| Combination-Coach | 13 |
| Parlor | 5 |
| Sleeping | 30 |
| Dining | 15 |
| Club, Lounge, Observation | 8 |
| Postal | 4 |
| Other Head-end | 55 |
| Total Passenger Cars: | 191 |
| Company Service Equipment | 571 |
| Car Ferries and other self-propelled vessels | 3 |
Wabash Railroad No. 1015 E-8A holding with a passenger train at the old
Fort St. Union Depot in Detroit, Michigan in 1962.
(Dan Pope Collection)
A Wabash luggage stamp.
(W. Lenheim Collection)
Wabash Railroad No. 1001 E-7AA leading an unnamed passenger train past an industrial crossing at Decatur, Illinois, 1962.
(Dan Pope Collection)
A 1904 St. Louis World's Fair advertisement.
(W. Lenheim Collection)
Late 20th century
In fall of 1960, the PRR agreed to a lease of the Wabash by the Norfolk and Western Railway.
The PRR's Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad assumed control of the Wabash's Ann Arbor on December 31, 1962. On October 16, 1964, the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (Nickel Plate Road) merged into the Norfolk and Western Railway, and the N&W leased the Wabash and Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway.
On March 31, 1970, the Pennsylvania Company exchanged its last Wabash shares for N&W common stock; that stock was later divested as a condition of the 1968 merger into Penn Central Transportation. Because it was only leased, as opposed to merged outright, the Wabash Railroad continued to trade its stock on the New York Stock Exchange.
The N&W and the Southern Railway merged in 1982, although the Wabash continued to exist on paper. NS formally merged the Wabash into the N&W in November 1991.
The Wabash's City of St. Louis streamliner in the 1950s.
(Curt Teich for Wabash Railroad, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Major routes
Windsor - Buffalo /Niagara Falls
In 1897 the Wabash leases the eastern lines of the former Great Western Railway between Windsor and Buffalo, which was amalgamated with the Grand Trunk in 1882. Charles M. Hays, president of the Grand Trunk and former president of the Wabash, secures a trackage rights agreement to give the Wabash operating rights in Canada. Its Canadian headquarters are located in St. Thomas because it is roughly equidistant between Detroit and Niagara Falls.
Wabash EMD F7 No. 1189 at the Monticello Railway Museum.
(Daniel Schwen, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Toledo–Hannibal
The Toledo to Hannibal Line was constructed in 1855. The line out of the Illinois River valley from Griggsville to Baylis had the steepest ruling grade on the Wabash, almost 2%, which required helpers in steam era. After World War II, the line was relocated to ease the grade. In 1955, passenger service was discontinued, and by 1989, the line from Maumee to Liberty Center, Ohio, was abandoned. The portion from Liberty Center to the western border of Ohio is operated by a shortline railroad. The abandoned section was converted for use as the south fork of the Wabash Cannonball Trail.
The Maumee-Montpelier, Ohio, section was abandoned by NS in 1990, and makes up the North fork of the Wabash Cannonball Trail. It is the longest rail trail in Ohio.
After the breakup of Conrail in 1998, NS connected the small remaining segment from Maumee to its Chicago Main, allowing it to access Maumee via a shorter route. This caused the abandonment of the west side of the Toledo Terminal Railroad.
Wabash (N&W) SW9 369 switching in front of the Decatur, Ill. station on May 7, 1966.
(Roger Puta, courtesy Marty Bernard, railfan 44, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Detroit–Chicago
This line covers the 3rd (Montpelier-Detroit) and 4th (Montpelier-Clarke Jct.–B&OCT+SC&S–State Line–C&WI) Districts of the Wabash.
The Wabash was part of the Union Belt of Detroit, a joint switching operation started with the Pere Marquette and later the PRR joined.
Detroit-Saint Louis passenger trains:
- Detroit Limited (Pullman)
- St. Louis Limited (Pullman) (westbound counterpart to the Detroit Limited)
- Cannon Ball
Detroit-Chicago passenger Trains:
- Detroit Arrow (joint with PRR)
- Chicago Arrow (joint with PRR) (westbound counterpart to the Detroit Arrow)
The Montpelier-Chicago line was started in the early 1890s, allowing the Wabash to give up trackage rights over the Erie (Chicago and Atlantic).
The Blue Bird's "Vista-Dome" dome parlor-observation car in the 1950s.
(Wabash Railroad, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Chicago–St. Louis
Completed in 1880 from Bement to Chicago, using the Chicago & Western Indiana as a terminal line. The Wabash became a joint owner of the C&WI along with founder Chicago & Eastern Illinois and other railroads. It comprises the 6th, 7th and 8th Districts of the Decatur Division. Trackage between Manhattan and Gibson City was abandoned by NS, for rights on CN (IC).
Passenger trains:
- Blue Bird
- Banner Blue
- Wabash Banner Limited
Wabash No. 554 (FM H24-66) switching at Saunemin, IL on Nov 24, 1962.
(Roger Puta, courtesy Marty Bernard, railfan 44, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Council Bluffs, Iowa – Brunswick, Missouri
This line has the highest point on the Wabash at Dumfries, Iowa (1242' above sea level). Most of the line was abandoned by N&W in 1984. The Wabash trackage between Brunswick and Council Bluffs comprised the 18th and 19th Districts, with the dividing point being Stanberry, Missouri.
Postcard photo of the Wabash Banner Limited, which traveled between St. Louis and Chicago, 1912. (Wabash Railroad, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Postcard photo of the St. Louis-Colorado Limited passing Forest Park in St. Louis, 1914. (Wabash and Union Pacific Railroads, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Iowa
The Iowa Southern Railroad (ISR) took over 61.5 miles of the Wabash in Iowa to the Missouri state line between Council Bluffs and Blanchard, Iowa. On August 22, 1988, the line was cut back to serve only Council Bluffs. In August 1990 the remaining Iowa Southern line in Council Bluffs was sold to the Council Bluffs & Ottumwa Railroad. In May 1991 the CBOA was sold to the Council Bluffs Railway, an OmniTrax subsidiary. Iowa Interstate purchased CBR on July 1, 2006. The 66-mile route is abandoned between Council Bluffs and Blanchard and was converted for use as the Wabash Trace Trail.
Missouri
A 93-mile portion of the Council Bluffs–St. Louis line in Missouri between Blanchard, Iowa, and Lock Springs was sold to the Northern Missouri Railroad and began operations on February 13, 1984. Operations on that line were discontinued in June 1986.
The Wabash Railroad ran their passenger trains that came into St. Louis on a 7-mile stretch of track that ran from Grand Ave (through a rail yard near Vandeventer Avenue), through University City (at Delmar Station) to a junction at Redmond Ave. in Ferguson, where the Ferguson station (now an ice cream parlor) was at North Florissant and Carson Ave., and where it met up with the current Norfolk Southern mainline. After passenger service was discontinued, trains on this stretch were reduced to one westbound symbol freight and one local per day. Norfolk Southern, who took over the line after the merger, abandoned the stretch in 1988. The Bi-State Development Agency purchased the line, which is now operated by MetroLink. MetroLink light rail trains run on the portion from north of the University of Missouri - St. Louis (UMSL) to Grand Ave, while the north portion is now the Ted Jones Trail, which runs from Florissant Road at UMSL up to Redmond Avenue, where the old junction was located.
Norfolk & Western abandoned the track between Lock Springs and Chillicothe in 1983, and salvaged this portion of the line in 1985.
Thirty-seven miles of track between Chillicothe and Brunswick was sold to the Green Hills Rural Development, Inc., a Missouri economic development group organized as a non-profit corporation, in 1985. The line was leased, by order of the ICC, to the Chillicothe-Brunswick Rail Maintenance Authority (CBRM) on July 24, 1987. On April 1, 1990, the line was leased to the Wabash and Grand River Railway (WGR). The WGR's lease was terminated on December 1, 1993, due to severe flood damage on the line, and the line reverted to CBRM.
In 2003, during a dispute caused by inter-community rivalries and jealousies over industrial development along the line, the owner, Green Hills Rural Development, Inc. "sold" the railroad to the City of Chillicothe, MO, (all real estate, rails, tools, rolling stock and locomotives) for $32,500. Thereafter, the line was immediately appraised for $1.53 million, not including rolling stock or other tools or equipment and inventory of the short line railroad.
On December 8, 2006, the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune reported that the city of Chillicothe sold the majority, about 30 miles (48 km), of the railroad to Seattle-based Montoff Transportation, LLC for $976,000. The part of the railroad that was sold had been embargoed since 2004. The city still owns the railroad to the city's industrial park and to a location just east of Chillicothe, where future development is planned. Today, the part of the railroad south of Norville has been abandoned and dismantled, and the city has pocketed a large sum of cash. On January 29, 2008, The Chillicothe City Press reported that the city council had voted to buy back the right of way previously sold to Montoff Transportation, paying $10 to acquire the 100' wide by 29-mile long corridor. The stated intention was to gradually develop a trail. The report further stated that, though Montoff had the right as part of salvaging the rails to remove the bridges along the right of way, the cost to do so had been excessive. Instead, the deteriorated decks, which were sufficient for light duty use such as a trail, were being left.
Moberly–Des Moines
The Moberly-to-Des Moines line consisted of the 15th & 16th Districts of the Moberly Division, with the dividing point between the two districts being Moulton, Iowa. The line had a good traffic base up until the early 1970s, when traffic began to fall off precipitously. Freight traffic included coal mined in Iowa (prior to 1960), agricultural goods, farm machinery, and paper products. A change of personnel in customer service at Des Moines brought about a resurgence in business in the late 1970s and into the 1980s – so much so that NS largely re-built the line with newer, heavier steel and continuous welded rail in the mid-1980s. The Moberly-to-Des Moines line had few local industries shipping on it in the 1980s in either northern Missouri or southern Iowa, however, and served primarily as a "bridge" to get the NS to the Des Moines market.
During the early 1990s, NS began to look for ways to save on track outlays and maintenance, and a deal was hammered out with the Burlington Northern (BN) to share access to Des Moines over the old Chicago, Burlington and Quincy (CBQ) "K Line" which paralleled the Mississippi River from Hannibal, MO north to Burlington, Iowa. From there, haulage rights were secured to Des Moines over the BN mainline to Albia, then northward to Des Moines on the old Albia joint trackage. A portion of the line north of Moulton was saved in order to provide access to the national rail system by the Appanoose County Community Railroad (APNC).
The last carded NS train on the Moberly-Des Moines line ran in 1994. The Moberly-to-Moulton segment in Iowa was used extensively in 1993 during the Midwestern Floods of that year, as many observers noted that it was one of the few north–south through routes that were "above sea level" during the flooding. Unfortunately, this was not a factor that could have been used to save the line. Today the line's right-of-way has not been preserved, and as of 1997 the line was completely dismantled and is quickly being consumed by other land uses.
Major freight customers in 1960
- Ford - Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Toledo, Kansas City, Buffalo
- Pillsbury Company - Springfield, Illinois
- A. E. Staley - Decatur, Illinois
- A. P. Green Firebrick - Mexico, Missouri
- Archer Daniel Midland Company - Decatur, Illinois
- Detroit Union Produce Terminal
- Lauhoff Grain Company - Danville, Illinois
- International Salt - Detroit, Michigan
- Central Stone - Huntington, Missouri
- Granite City Steel - Granite City, Illinois
- Acme Fast Freight - Detroit, Kansas City
Observation car of the St. Louis-Colorado Limited.
(Wabash and Union Pacific Railroads, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Passenger trains
The Wabash had a fleet of passenger trains, including several streamliners and domeliners:
- Blue Bird, inaugurated in 1938
- Banner Blue
- Cannon Ball
- City of Kansas City, built by ACF
- City of St. Louis (in partnership with UP)
- City of Decatur
- Des Moines Limited
- Detroit Arrow (in partnership with PRR)
- Detroit Limited
- Kansas City Express
- Midnight Limited
- Omaha Limited
- Pacific Coast Special
- Red Bird
- St. Louis-Colorado Limited (in partnership with UP)
- St. Louis Limited
- St. Louis Special
- Southland (in partnership with PRR and L&N)
- Wabash Cannon Ball
The first passenger trains to be dieselized used EMD E7 locomotives, and later ALCO PAs and EMD E8s.
Wabash Cannonball
The name of this legendary train became famous with the 1904 revision of an 1882 song about the "Great Rock Island Route." Yet the name was never borne by a real train until the Wabash Railroad christened its Detroit-St. Louis day train as the Wabash Cannon Ball in 1949. The train survived until the creation of Amtrak in 1971, when it was discontinued. On October 26 and 27, 2013, Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society's Nickel Plate Road 765, in conjunction with the Norfolk Southern Railway's "21st Century Steam" program, pulled a 225-mile (362-km) round-trip excursion, retracing the Cannon Ball's former route between Fort Wayne and Lafayette, Indiana.
Wabash Cannon Ball: Bridging America's Coasts | Trains Unlimited (S1, E8) | Full Episode
Immortalized by ballad, the Wabash railroad bridged America's east and west coasts, and became railroad slang for the Midwest's fastest trains. See more in Season 1, Episode 8, "The Wabash Cannon Ball."
Excellent video that's heavy into Wabash Railroad history.
Norfolk Southern No. 1070, the Wabash Heritage Unit in Lenexa, KS, October 9, 2017.
(Tyler Silvest from Olathe, Kansas, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Rail to trail
Several portions of the old Wabash Railroad right-of-way have been converted to recreational use, including the Wabash Cannonball Trail in northwest Ohio, the Wabash Trail and Wauponsee Glacial Trail in Illinois and the Wabash Trace Nature Trail in Iowa.
Wabash Railroad Overview
Headquarters: St. Louis, Missouri
Reporting mark: WAB
Locale: Midwestern United States; Ontario
Dates of operation: 1837–1964
Successor: Norfolk and Western Railway
Technical
Track gauge: 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)
Length: 2,524 miles (4,062 km)
