One Morning in Crawfordsville, Indiana

Amtrak train No. 851 approaches the Crawfordsville station in August 2011.

When I lived in Indiana between 1983 and 1991, Amtrak’s Hoosier State was a part of my life for periodic day trips from Indianapolis to Chicago.

I actually preferred to ride the Cardinal because it had a full-service dining car and slumber coaches, which offered a reasonable fare for a return trip to Indy.

But the Cardinal only ran three days a week so more often than not I wound up going to Chicago on the Hoosier State.

After leaving Indiana for Pennsylvania and, later, Ohio, I rarely saw the Hoosier State again.

I followed its story from afar, including how it was discontinued in 1995 only to be brought back because operating a hospital train to and from Beech Grove shops in suburban Indianapolis didn’t work out so well.

In August 2011 I was on my way to Illinois. I stayed overnight in Indianapolis and got up early the next morning to get to Crawfordsville before No. 851 did.

The sun wasn’t yet above the tree line when the Hoosier State arrived, but there was enough light to document the coming and going of the train.

Since making these images, the Hoosier State has had a rough ride at times with the latest development being the takeover of the train by Iowa Pacific Holdings in July 2015.

IP won high marks for its on-board service, but the Indiana Department of Transportation declined IP’s request for more money.

So IP pulled out and Amtrak has resumed operation of the Hoosier State. Actually, Amtrak was never completely out of the picture with Nos. 850 and 851 because it provided the operating crews and handled relationships with the host railroads.

So now what was the usual state of affairs in Crawfordsville is back again. Here is a look back at a morning not too long ago when the Hoosier State came calling.

A typical Amshack that is so typical in smaller cities served by Amtrak.

The old Monon station is no longer used by Amtrak.

All aboard for Chicago and all intermediate stops.

And away it goes to its next stop in Lafayette.

A ;l;ast look at the train, which has two cars being ferried from Beech Grove to Chicago.

Abandoned and Forlorn in Crestline

Unless you are familiar with the Fort Wayne Line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Penn Central and Conrail, you might be puzzled that when Amtrak began service on May 1, 1971, its Chicago-New York/Washington Broadway Limited stopped at Crestline, Ohio.

This village of 4,600 is near Mansfield, which has a population of 46,000. But Amtrak chose to stop in Crestline and not Mansfield. In fact, Amtrak never stopped in Mansfield even though between 1971 and 1990 it put four trains a day through the county seat of Richland County.

Crestline was a crew change point for Penn Central, which probably had a lot to do with why it was chosen rather than Mansfield as an Amtrak stop.

Amtrak’s early planners sought to minimize the number of station stops on most routes and therefore the Broadway Limited would serve just three stations in Ohio: Lima, Crestline and Canton.

Crestline wasn’t any ordinary town. The PRR had a roundhouse and yard here. There was a large union station in the northeast quadrant of the diamonds where the PRR crossed the Cleveland-St. Louis line of the New York Central. There was a railroad YMCA.

The union station and YMCA were gone by the time I first visited Crestline. In fact, Amtrak was also gone, the Broadway Limited having been rerouted off the Fort Wayne Line in November 1990.

This image was made in September 1998. Amtrak had been gone for nearly eight years and the Amshack that it had used in Crestline was in disrepair.

I haven’t been back to Crestline for several years, but I believe this structure was removed when the Fort Wayne Line was reworked after the Conrail split. There isn’t much of the railroads left in Crestline except the tracks themselves.

There was no need to keep the Amshack given that Amtrak is unlikely to return to the Fort Wayne Line through Crestline.