Wabash Railroad
The Wabash Railroad (formerly also Wabash Railway and Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway ) was a Class I railroad company in the United States , based in St. Louis . Their network stretched in its greatest extent from Buffalo over Detroit , Chicago and St. Louis to Council Bluffs and Kansas City . In 1929 the network had a route length of 4062 kilometers. The Wabash has always been a link between the railway companies of the East and the West, as it was one of the few operating on both sides of the Mississippiowned important routes. The company was created in 1879 through the merger of two predecessor companies and existed legally with one interruption in the 1880s and under several name changes until 1991. As early as 1964, the Norfolk and Western Railroad leased the Wabash and took over the management. With its legal successor, the Norfolk Southern Railway , the company finally formally merged in 1991 and ceased to exist on paper.
Name and symbolism
The name Wabash Railway was in use from 1877 to 1879, from 1887 to 1889, and again from 1915 to 1937. From 1889 to 1915 and after 1937 the company was called Wabash Railroad and from 1879 to 1887 it was called Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway .
In the 1880s, the company logo consisted of a rectangle or a stylized scroll (see picture on the right) that read "Wabash" or "The Wabash Railway". In 1890 it was decided to abandon this logo in favor of a flag with the text "The Wabash Route". The previous motto of the company "The Great Wabash Route" gave way to the new slogan "The Banner Route" (The Banner Line). The text on the flag was shortened to "Wabash" a few years later. Already at the turn of the century, the logo, which was valid until recently, could be found on timetables, vehicles and in advertisements. In 1912 only the words “Follow the Flag” were added, which quickly became Wabash's motto.
This lettering goes back to the practice, inherited from the predecessor company North Missouri Railroad, of carrying so-called “pay cars” on some trains, from which the wages of the railway employees were paid along the route. One day before this car started running, a locomotive with a flag drove over the route. This enabled the employees to know that the car with the wages would come the following day. The wages “followed the flag”. Although this practice was given up around 1905, the saying remained.
history
The Wabash Railroad had a very eventful history, which is characterized by reorganizations, mergers, bankruptcies and name changes. Initially there were two major railroad companies that merged in 1879 to form the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway : the Wabash Railway and the St. Louis, Kansas City and Northern Railroad . However, the new company went bankrupt and was split into two companies again in 1887, which merged again two years later. From this point on, the company was called Wabash Railroad .
prehistory
Wabash Railway I.
When the name Wabash Railway was first used in 1877 , the railway company could already look back on 40 years of operating history. In 1837, local entrepreneurs founded the Northern Cross Railroad , which was to connect the city of Jacksonville, Illinois with the Illinois River . In the summer of 1839, the approximately 16 miles long route from Jacksonville to Meredosia on the Illinois River went into operation. The track width was 4 feet 9 inches or 1448 millimeters and the tracks consisted of tape rails on longitudinal sleepers. In December 1841, the company began operations on the 66 km extension from Jacksonville to Springfield . As early as 1844, however, passenger traffic and locomotive traffic had to be stopped due to poor track quality. The freight cars were only pulled by mules and sometimes even oxen. The company went bankrupt and on April 26, 1847, the newly founded Sangamon and Morgan Railroad bought the equipment and vehicles. They rebuilt the line from scratch, this time in standard gauge and with significantly more stable T-rails. The route was retained except in the Jacksonville metropolitan area. From July 22, 1849 trains ran again from Springfield to Meredosia. In the same year a branch to Naples was opened. The company changed its name to Great Western Railroad on February 13, 1853 and in 1856 extended its route beyond Springfield to the Indiana border . Another three years later it was reorganized into the Great Western Rail Road of 1859 . In Meredosia, the railroad bridge over the Illinois River went into operation in 1860, which enabled a connection to the Quincy and Toledo Railroad , opened in 1857, to be established.
On July 1, 1865, the company merged with the Quincy and Toledo Railroad as well as the Toledo and Wabash Railroad , the Illinois and Southern Iowa Railroad and the Wabash and Western Railway to form the Toledo, Wabash and Western Railway . The entire route of this new company ran from Toledo on Lake Erie via Lafayette (Indiana) and Springfield to Quincy and had a branch from Clayton to Keokuk (Iowa) , which, like Quincy, is on the Mississippi River . From Toledo to Fort Wayne the train crossed the valley of the Maumee River , to the border with Illinois it followed the Wabash River , which the Wabash Railroad owes its name to. The TW&W was the first railway company with a continuous connection from Lake Erie to the Mississippi.
After another important branch line from Decatur to East St. Louis had been opened on October 3, 1870 , through-coaches ran from St. Louis to New York for the first time in 1871 and ran the TW&W to Toledo. The journey time was 48 hours, but was reduced to 38 hours in 1873 by expanding the route, increasing the speed and eliminating intermediate stops.
In February 1875 the railway company declared bankruptcy after the general economic situation in the country had deteriorated and the year before the two important workshops of the railway in Springfield and Clayton had burned down. A strike in Toledo and competition from other railway companies did the rest. The line was sold in 1876 and re-established on January 10, 1877 as the Wabash Railway .
St. Louis, Kansas City and Northern Railroad
The St. Louis, Kansas City and Northern Railroad goes back to the North Missouri Railroad founded in Missouri on March 1, 1851 . This company had opened its first railway line from St. Louis to the Missouri River across from Saint Charles in colonial gauge (1676 mm) on August 2, 1855 . Until 1859 the line was extended to Macon . Further construction to the north was interrupted by the Civil War, during which the railway line was badly damaged. Telegraph lines, station buildings, bridges, tracks, but also trains were destroyed by southern troops. The Centralia massacre occurred on the railway line in 1864. Guerrilla fighters, led by Bloody Bill Anderson , stopped a train in the city of Centralia station with unarmed Union soldiers on their way home. They tortured and murdered the soldiers, burned down the station and train, thereby interrupting operations again.
After the end of the war, operations returned to normal very quickly. Within three days in August 1867, the entire line was converted to standard gauge , which now made it possible to hand over cars to subsequent railway companies. The route was extended in the following years to Ottumwa (Iowa) and there was a branch from Moberly to Birmingham , from where there were joint use rights on the Kansas City and Cameron Railroad to Kansas City . In 1871 the gap in Saint Charles was closed with the opening of the bridge over the Missouri . However, the company went bankrupt and was sold in October 1871. To express the successful connection between St. Louis and Kansas City, the company called itself from January 2, 1872 St. Louis, Kansas City and Northern Railroad . In 1876, the railway built an important link to Grand Union Station in St. Louis. In addition, numerous smaller railway companies that had built connections to the main line of the railway were bought up in the 1870s.
First attempt at fusion, the Gould era (1879–1887)
In early 1877, Cornelius K. "Commodore" Garrison had acquired a large stake in the St. Louis, Kansas City and Northern Railroad. In November 1878 he also bought substantial shares in the Wabash Railway, of which he became president shortly afterwards.
The St. Louis, Kansas City & Northern, meanwhile, completed their route to Council Bluffs in the second half of 1879 and was able to use the " Iowa Pool ", a price agreement between North Western , Burlington and Rock Island , the three largest railway companies in the region.
Railroad magnate Jay Gould began buying shares in the Wabash Railway in early 1879. In April he acquired all of the shares in Commodore Garrison and became the new president. In November, the Wabash Railway and the St. Louis, Kansas City and Northern Railroad finally merged to form the Wabash , St. Louis and Pacific Railroad . President of the new society was initially Cyrus W. Field, who was replaced in April 1880 by Solon Humphreys and shortly afterwards by Jay Gould himself.
In May 1879, Gould acquired the Chicago and Paducah Railroad , which operated a route from Streator to Effingham and a branch to Altamont , Illinois . To connect this route with Chicago, he founded the Chicago and Strawn Railway , which opened the route between the eponymous cities on August 9, 1880. From 1879 to 1882, Gould bought or leased countless other railroad companies in Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois. The Wabash route network nearly doubled from 1,800 miles (2900 kilometers) at the merger in 1879 to 3,518 miles (5662 kilometers) in 1883. The Wabash itself also built an important route from Butler, Indiana to Detroit . In the network of the Wabash there were now two narrow-gauge railways with a gauge of three feet (914 mm), which led from Des Moines to Fonda and from West Lebanon (Indiana) to Le Roy (Illinois) .
The main competitor of the Wabash in the western part of the network was the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. Its vice-president and general manager summed it up on May 11, 1880 in a conversation with the board of the railway company:
"The Wabash is a nuisance to us all now."
"Wabash is now a burden for all of us."
In January 1883, the Wabash opened the Humeston to Shenandoah connection , which now ran through express trains from Chicago to Council Bluffs. Jay Gould leased the Wabash to the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway in the spring of 1883 , but this could not prevent bankruptcy on May 28, 1884. Solon Humphreys and Thomas E. Tutt, a St. Louis banker, took on the administration, and Gould stepped down as president. In 1886 a court order was to replace Humphreys and Tutt with Thomas M. Cooley, a law professor at the University of Michigan and judge in the Michigan Supreme Court , but the two appealed. As a result, only part of the company was handed over to Cooley. During this time, several major rail workers' strikes took place for higher wages.
On March 1, 1887, the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway was officially dissolved and split into two railway companies. In the western part of the network, the Wabash Western Railway took over the routes from St. Louis to Kansas City, Moberly, Des Moines, Brunswick and Pattonsburg as well as branches to Columbia and Glasgow and in the eastern part of the network the routes Clymers – Detroit, Attica – Covington, Sidney– Champaign and the Laketon Junction to Chicago line leased from the Chicago and Atlantic Railroad . Many lines leased from Gould have been returned to their owners. The network of this society was thus divided into two parts. The western part of the network had a route length of 641 miles (1032 kilometers), the eastern part of such a distance of 350 miles (563 kilometers). The rest of the network - also minus numerous leased lines - was taken over by a new Wabash Railway . Their network thus included the routes from Toledo to St. Louis, from Chicago and Streator to Effingham, from Decatur to Hannibal , Keokuk and Quincy as well as branches to Pittsfield, Altamont and Edwardsville with a total length of 956 miles (1,539 kilometers).
Another merger, Wabash Railroad I (1889–1915)
On May 15, 1889, the Wabash Western Railway and the Wabash Railway merged again to form the Wabash Railroad , which immediately began to expand again. O. D. Ashley became the first president of the new society. In the years that followed, Wabash replaced the leased line from Laketon Junction to Chicago with its own new line that connected to the network in Montpelier . On April 21, 1893, the first Wabash train reached Chicago over the new line.
Until 1890, trains had to run on the St. Louis – Detroit route on the poorly developed Eel River Railroad . Therefore, in 1890, the Wabash first leased the Peru and Detroit Railway , which had opened a connecting route from Peru to Chili . This line was later sold to the Winona Interurban Railway after the Fort Wayne and Detroit Railroad from New Haven to Butler had been opened by the Wabash in 1902 . The lease with the Eel River Railroad, which had existed since 1879, was terminated in the late 1890s. The line was later taken over by the Pennsylvania Railroad .
At the end of 1897, Wabash agreed a right of use for the Katy main line from Moberly to Hannibal. On January 24, 1898, the Wabash network reached Buffalo . On that day, the company agreed on rights of use for the route of the Grand Trunk Railway from Windsor (Ontario) to the state border at Niagara Falls , for the route of the Erie Railroad from the border to Buffalo and for the freight yard of the Lehigh Valley Railroad in Buffalo. In 1901 the company leased the Omaha and St. Louis Railroad and two years later acquired the Brunswick and Chillicothe Railroad . This gave the Wabash a connection to Council Bluffs again .
From June 1901 Joseph Ramsey was president of the railway company. In the same year, the Wabash acquired the majority of the shares in the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad , whose main route led from Toledo to Wheeling (West Virginia) . In 1902 the Western Maryland Rail Road , which had built from Baltimore to Hagerstown , and the West Virginia Central and Pittsburgh Railway , which ran from Cumberland (Maryland) to Montrose (West Virginia) , were also bought. This company merged with Western Maryland in 1906. On July 2, 1904, the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad , owned by Wabash, opened the route from Wheeling to Pittsburgh . Additional lines in Maryland and Pennsylvania were built in the following years. To manage the routes east of Toledo, the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway was founded in May 1904 , and Ramsey was also its president. In April 1905 Ramsey gave up this presidency and was voted out of office as president of the Wabash Railroad in October of the same year. He was succeeded by Frederick A. Delano .
The expectations for the new connection to Pittsburgh were not fulfilled at all and so the Wheeling & Lake Erie and the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal went bankrupt in 1908. The companies were spun off from the Wabash empire and later reorganized as the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway . On December 26, 1911, the Wabash Railroad also declared bankruptcy. Bankruptcy trustee was the US District Court under the bankruptcy administration of Frederick A. Delano.
Wabash Railway III (1915-1937)
On October 22, 1915, the railway company was reorganized as the Wabash Railway . Edward Francis Kearney became President of the Society. It was the third railway company with this name. At that time, the route network was 3272 kilometers long. 517 kilometers of this were double-tracked. Rights of use existed for a further 766 kilometers. The luxury express train "Banner Blue Limited", later "Banner Limited", operated from this time between Chicago and St. Louis.
On December 28, 1917, the United States Railroad Administration (USRA) took control of the Wabash Railway because of the First World War . The USRA implemented a wage increase and began unifying the railways in the United States. Passenger trains running in parallel were discontinued, and so of the previous four, only one daily Chicago – New York train ran over the Wabash route to Buffalo, which also stopped at most of the stations along the route. However, the Wabash received numerous federally funded new vehicles. In 1918 alone, the USRA provided the Wabash with 25 Mikado locomotives and 3800 new freight cars. Only on March 1, 1920 did the railways in the USA regain their independence. Meanwhile, on March 10, 1919, President Kearney had died. The chairman of the board WH Williams temporarily took over Kearney's duties before James E. Taussig took over the office in early 1920 .
After wages were reduced several times, but the cost of living increased, it came at the Wabash Railway and other railway companies from July 1, 1922 to one of the largest rail workers strike in US history. 92% of the approximately 3,000 workshop workers in the company stopped working. The Wabash hired scabs and posted armed guards at their main workshops in Moberly and Decatur. The governor of Missouri also dispatched 300 National Guard soldiers. The striking mob forcibly evicted some of the strike breakers, but otherwise no armed clashes occurred. Wabash President Taussig issued an ultimatum to return to work by July 10, otherwise he would fire the strikers without notice. It was later agreed that the strike time would be offset as unpaid leave and the workers were allowed to return. They also lost all retirement entitlements and many workers were transferred to lower posts. The strike did not begin to dissolve until early autumn of the year, and this lasted until November. Numerous trains had to be canceled during the strike. The costs for the security personnel were added, so that the total cost of the strike for the railway company was calculated at just under 1.3 million US dollars.
In the following years the Wabash was very successful and could book a net profit of about nine million US dollars per year. This money was invested, among other things, in expanding the route network. In November 1925, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) approved the takeover of the majority stake in Ann Arbor Railroad , which had already taken place on May 19, 1925. The company remained operational, but was under the control of the Wabash. The 473-kilometer stretch of the "Annie" ran from Toledo, where there was a connection to the Wabash network, across the state of Michigan to Frankfort on Lake Michigan . From there, there were train ferries across the lake. In the northern part of Michigan, the Ann Arbor Railroad also belonged to the 61-kilometer Manistique and Lake Superior Railroad , which reached the shores of Lake Superior .
1926 bought the Wabash 20% of the shares in the Lehigh Valley Railroad. However, these shares were sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1928 . The Pennsylvania in turn had bought 48% of the shares in the Wabash Railway in 1927 and thus had some control over the railway company. Although the ICC did not agree to this takeover in 1930, as Wabash was a direct competitor of Pennsylvania and they thus violated the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, ownership remained unchanged. On March 19, 1934, the Supreme Court ruled that the acquisition of the Wabash shares was legal. In addition to these better-known railway companies, Wabash also acquired two smaller railways in Indiana. The New Jersey, Indiana and Illinois Railroad owned 18 kilometers of industrial and sidings in South Bend and became the property of Wabash in 1926. The Lake Erie and Fort Wayne Railroad was a shunting company with two miles of track in Fort Wayne and was acquired in April 1929. Both companies continued to operate independently, but under the control of Wabash.
In addition to the share business, Wabash also modernized its own route network. In addition to the double-track expansion of some sections of the route and the expansion of the automatic block signaling system, it opened a new double-track steel and concrete bridge over the Sangamon River near Decatur on January 31, 1927 . At the urging of the car lobby, numerous level crossings were replaced by overpasses. On August 1, 1929, the company opened New Delmar Boulevard Station in St. Louis.
Investments were also made in the vehicle fleet. In September 1925, for example, the Banner Blue Limited , equipped with new rolling stock, ran for the first time and now only took six and a half hours from Chicago to St. Louis. From December 1927 onwards, 44 new express train coaches increased the comfort and travel speed considerably on other routes. From 1923 to 1925, 75 new steam locomotives were also purchased. Another 50 followed in 1930. Two gasoline-electric passenger railcars were added to the Wabash fleet in 1926. They were mainly used as passenger trains between Decatur, Illinois and Hannibal and between Brunswick and Maryville, Missouri. Due to frequent breakdowns, they were taken out of service in 1939.
After the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, revenues fell rapidly, by 45% within three years. In 1931 the company was in the red for the first time and posted a net loss of over 7 million US dollars. On September 9, 1931, President Taussig retired and was replaced by 57-year-old WH Williams, who died suddenly on October 14. He was succeeded by 47 year old Walter S. Franklin from Maryland. The District Court of East Missouri declared the company insolvent on December 1, 1931. President Franklin and Railway Deputy Attorney General Frank C. Nicodemus Jr., also of Maryland, have been appointed bankruptcy administrators. Franklin resigned from this office on October 19, 1933, and was succeeded by Norman B. Pitcairn of Pennsylvania. All three people had a good relationship with the Pennsylvania Railroad . In 1932 the radical austerity measures began. To this end, the administration of the railway was streamlined: five network departments became three and in 1934 administrative offices in Chicago, St. Louis, Moberly and Montpelier were closed. Workers' wages were temporarily cut by 10%, but this was reversed by 1935. Some unprofitable branch lines were closed, including the lines to Covington, Indiana and Excelsior Springs, Missouri, the line from Clayton to Camp Point and from Stewardson to Altamont (both Illinois). Older locomotives and freight wagons were scrapped, so that in 1935 only 3.1% of the wagons were over 20 years old - the lowest value of all Class I railway companies at the time.
For some sections of the route, Wabash was able to grant joint use rights, which brought additional income. In 1933, for example, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad agreed to operate one direction between Albia and Tracy (Iowa) . In the same year, the Pennsylvania Railroad agreed to share the main line from Chicago to Fort Wayne as well as the joint express train service between Chicago and Detroit; now only a local passenger train ran on the Wabash main line from Chicago to Montpelier. Improvements were also made on the Chicago – St. Louis, for which the Blue Banner Limited only needed 5.5 hours from June 1935. In 1936, Wabash sold its largest grain silo in Chicago for $ 700,000. Despite the financial crisis, a new bridge over the Missouri River near St. Charles was opened on October 13, 1936 after almost five years of construction.
Wabash Railroad II (1937-1964)
On October 2, 1937, the railway company was reorganized under the name Wabash Railroad Company , but not formally founded due to financial difficulties. Further savings measures were taken. In 1938 the Sullivan – Stewardson section in Illinois was closed. In 1942, the branch line to Glasgow ended. In 1945 the short junction to Stroh (Indiana) was closed. In addition, from 1939 to 1945, the railway also bought the first 27 diesel-electric locomotives from various manufacturers, initially only for shunting operations.
Meanwhile, in 1941, the Pennsylvania Railroad had applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission for a majority stake in Wabash, which would give the company enough funds to start up. Objections came from the New York Central Railroad and its subsidiary Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad , which were themselves interested in a takeover. The ICC approved the application, however, and from January 1, 1942, the Pennsylvania Railroad was in the majority ownership of the Wabash Railroad Company, which was formally founded on the same day. The previous insolvency administrator Norman B. Pitcairn was unanimously elected President of the new company.
When the USA entered the war at the end of 1941, the volume of transport increased considerably. With its well-developed main line from Kansas City to the east, which did not touch the busy railway hubs of St. Louis and Chicago, the Wabash and then the Pennsylvania Railroad were an important route for military transport. Due to the shortage of petrol and tires, many car owners switched back to the train, so that the number of passengers skyrocketed. In 1945 over 2.1 million passengers were carried after only a good 800,000 passengers were transported in 1941.
The most momentous accident in the history of the Wabash occurred during this time. In August 1942, a delayed passenger train ran into a riot of track near Warrenton, Missouri . All ten track workers died.
On December 23, 1944, the Wabash acquired the Hannibal – Moberly route from the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (MKT) for 2.4 million US dollars . She had already leased this important connecting route from 1922 and the MKT had not operated it since 1923. On June 2, 1946, the Wabash and the Union Pacific Railroad introduced the City of St. Louis , an express train from St. Louis towards Southwest, which was extended to Los Angeles in the spring of 1951. The train was operated with wagons from both companies and from the outset with Union Pacific diesel locomotives. The first Wabash diesel locomotive for regular express train operations was put into service in August of that year and was used on this route. The first diesel locomotives were running in regular freight traffic three years later. As early as October 1950, passenger traffic was completely converted to diesel operation, and in mid-June 1953 also the freight trains, except on the branch line to Keokuk. The bridge over the Illinois River at Meredosia could only carry light steam locomotives, which were not decommissioned until June 28, 1955 and replaced by two light diesel locomotives leased from the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Mogul type steam locomotive No. 573 was made available to the St. Louis Transportation Museum, where it is still on display today.
After the Second World War, they began to buy up other railway companies. In September 1946, the Wabash acquired the still operated three kilometers of sidings of the Chicago, Attica and Southern Railroad in Attica . On February 9, 1951, the Wabash Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad jointly acquired the majority stake in the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad . The route network of this railway company was 578 kilometers long and stretched between Detroit and Ironton on the Ohio River . From April 6, 1956, the Wabash Railroad owned one-tenth of the Illinois-Missouri Terminal Railway, which dominated the shunting operations in East St. Louis . President Pitcairn, meanwhile, retired on April 17, 1947, and was replaced by former Vice President Arthur K. Atkinson, who was 56 years old .
The first fully streamlined train of the Wabash ran from November 24, 1947 between Kansas City and St. Louis. From February 26, 1950, a streamlined train, the Blue Bird , was also used between St. Louis and Chicago . It only took him five hours and ten minutes to get there. Another innovation was the piggyback operation. Other railway companies had already introduced this in the 1930s and at the request of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad , truck trailers on specially procured flat cars ran from New York to Chicago over the tracks of these two railway companies from July 23, 1954 Buffalo and from there on the main line of the Wabash Railroad. The system proved itself and by March 1955 piggyback trains were running on all Wabash main lines. On October 6, 1959, after more than two years of construction, a new bridge was opened over the Illinois River, including a re-routing of the railway line at Valley City . The bridge at Meredosia was also renovated.
Atkinson also retired on July 1, 1959. He was succeeded by the 56 year old Herman H. Pevler from Indiana. Until then he was Vice President and General Manager of the Northwest Region of the Pennsylvania Railroad. During this time, more and more passenger trains were discontinued. Nevertheless, the Wabash received the majority of its express trains. In 1962, mixed trains were still running on the branch to Columbia .
Since 1960, negotiations were in progress to take over the Wabash Railroad by the Norfolk and Western Railroad . However, the Ann Arbor Railroad did not want to buy this. The Wabash therefore sold the Ann Arbor on September 9, 1963 to the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad, in which they still owned shares. In the summer of 1963, President Pevler had resigned to join Norfolk & Western. He was succeeded by 58-year-old Henry Whelen Large . The takeover was finally completed on October 16, 1964. The Wabash Railroad was leased from that day by Norfolk & Western, which also took over the management. The company continued to exist to manage the Wabash network.
The Wabash Railroad as a non-operating company
In the course of the 1960s, the new management was forced to gradually cease passenger traffic on the Wabash network due to rapidly falling transport numbers. The City of St. Louis operated for the last time on June 19, 1968 . That same year, the Banner Blue Limited and the City of Kansas City were also sidelined. The Blue Bird ran until January 1970, the last train with only one passenger. Only the Wabash Cannon Ball on the Detroit – St. Louis ran until April 30, 1971.
Many Wabash lines were shut down in the 1970s and 1980s. These included the main line Chicago – Decatur to a large extent, including the branch line to Streator , the line Meredosia – Keokuk, most of the line Moberly – Des Moines with the branch line to Ottumwa, the line to Omaha, most of the line Chicago – Toledo and the Delhi – Welland section of the route to Buffalo. The Bement – Sullivan line had already been dismantled in the 1950s.
In November 1991, the Wabash Railroad Company was eventually dissolved and in the 1990 by the merger of the Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway , founded Norfolk Southern Railway incorporated.
Sources and further reading
Individual evidence
- ^ Drury 2000, p. 446.
- ↑ a b Grant 2004, page 24.
- ^ Grant 2004, p. 35.
- ^ Grant 2004, p. 61.
- ^ Grant 2004, pp. 66-67.
- ^ Grant 2004, p. 133.
- ^ Grant 2004, p. 146.
- ^ Grant 2004, pp. 154-161.
- ^ Grant 2004, pp. 162-163.
- ^ Grant 2004, p. 168.
- ^ Grant 2004, pp. 167-171.
- ^ Grant 2004, p. 184.
- ^ Grant 2004, p. 187.
- ^ Grant 2004, p. 199.
literature
- George H. Drury: The Historical Guide to North American Railroads 2nd Ed. Kalmbach Publishing Co., Waukesha, WI 2000, ISBN 0-89024-356-5 , pages 444-6.
- H. Roger Grant: “Follow the Flag” - A History of the Wabash Railroad. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb IL, 2004, ISBN 0-87580-328-8
