PRR Abandonment: EC, Whiting, & Tolleston (2)
Continued from PART ONE:
“Finally, in February of 1964, East Chicago purchased a tract of land called “the strip” for $230,000. It stretched from Elm Street and Lincoln Street on the north side of Guthrie. PRR reluctantly let go of the property as a result of condemnation proceedings.”
Puzzle Pieces
On February 26, 1964, the Pennsylvania Railroad petitioned the state of Indiana to end its passenger service to Indiana Harbor and eliminate its East Chicago freight house.
Their interstate passenger service no longer stopped in Indiana Harbor. However, they did operate four commuter trains from Valparaiso to Chicago. This is affectionally known as the Valpo Dummy Shuttle. There were two shuttle trains; The Indiana Connection and The Calumet.
The Indiana Harbor depot would shut down but remain a closed-depot stop for the Dummy. However, no tickets were sold. All of this was approved. PRR only ran through freights into East Chicago — save for the Valpo commuter train. This setup eliminated obstacles for the city of East Chicago, which took no time to buy even more property from the fledgling railroad company.
The Purdue Foundation finally made some progress by convincing Nicosia to establish a housing plan for low-income families. Cal-View Apartments, a 225-unit housing project, was approved for construction in 1964 along the Guthrie Street strip — directly adjacent to Pennsylvania Railroad’s Ft. Wayne main line on property purchased from the said railroad.
What’s astonishing is that this project went forth with a whole mainline railroad running straight through the middle of it! What a renewal project, indeed.
Push and Pull
In July 1964, the Interstate Commerce Commission approved a merger between Norfolk & Western, Wabash Railway, and Nickel Plate railroads. The new company would be publically considered Norfolk & Western, though Wabash and Nickel Plate still existed on official paperwork.
As a result, PRR was forced to relinquish its interests in Norfolk & Western and Wabash for New York Central to be comfortable with PRR not having an unfair advantage over it.
PRR was fairing better than New York Central (not by much but by enough). Had PRR been allowed to control the newly merged Norfolk & Western, it may have stood a chance to survive through to the 70s and 80s on its own power. However, due to heavy lobbying by NYC, PRR relinquished its control.
Now the stage was set for New York Central to move in like a hawk and attempt to absorb Pennsylvania Railroad. PRR was staunchly against merging. NYC was faltering hard and needed PRR to save it from oblivion.
PRR’s management was better. Its equipment was better. Its business practices were better. NYC could not survive in a world where PRR and the new supercharged N&W existed as its competition.
The famed Wabash 4th District became the Norfolk & Western Gary District. The Nickel Plate became a part of Norfolk & Western’s Chicago Division.
To make an even longer story short, by 1968, PRR and NYC merged and became Penn Central Railroad.
1970’s POLITICS
A study commissioned by the Lake County Plan Commission in 1968 was deemed the “Comprehensive Park Study” or the “Comprehensive Plan for Parks and Open Space in Lake County.” William S. Lawrence & Associates, Inc conducted the study.
It was instrumental in creating the Lake County Park Board, which did not exist before this moment. This pushed community governments in Lake County to conduct their own parks studies.
East Chicago was not a part of the study’s jurisdiction.
However, a 1970 racial incident involving East Chicago Washington High School students and its vice-principal stirred East Chicago’s government into seeking ways to quell racial tensions in Indiana Harbor. East Chicago commissioned its own park study by Perkin and Will Associates of Chicago. It resulted in the following:
- Construction of a neighborhood center in Indiana Harbor and City Hall, as promised due to the racial unrest from 1970.
- A six-acre park, pool, and bath house at Goodman Park near the 151st Street housing projects.
- An ice skating rink, warming house, and lights at City Hall Park.
- An ice skating rink and warming house at Callahan Park.
- Two tot parks and two block parks in West Harbor or New Edition.
- Upgrading all 16 city parks with pools, including new pools at Tod Park and Marktown Park.
- Fifteen new tot lots and 13 new block parks.
- McArthur Golf Course expansion.
- Lake Front (Jeorse) Park redevelopment, marina, boat dock, fishing pier, beach, playground, parking.
- Community park/pool at Central Harbor Park.
- Inland Steel Park
These were submitted to East Chicago’s city government and geared towards solving inadequate community priorities, inadequate youth and adult recreational areas, poor distribution of recreational areas, and aging city park facilities. Once again, eyes went to the Ft. Wayne line, and talk of continuing urban renewal operations fired up again.
New Moves for East Chicago
In 1972 East Chicago’s newest mayor, Rob ‘Hollywood’ Pastrick, was instrumental in using city bonds to fund a slew of redevelopment projects. $2.5 million was approved by the council for the revamping of the Penn Central right-of-way.
Also, $500,000 was approved to purchase the rest of the right-of-way between Youngstown Tube (Inland) and Cline Avenue from Penn Central — which would reroute train traffic out of Indiana Harbor north of Cline Avenue on the former New York Central main (remember PRR and NYC are merged).
Speaking of Cline Avenue, its extension would see more of the former PRR right-of-way gobbled up by East Chicago.
East Chicago purchased the property from Penn Central Railroad right-of-way to the entrance of Inland Steel. Construction of the Cline Avenue elevated extension went through this property, including laying an access road.
The road’s construction required severing the Penn Central Ft. Wayne tracks at Cline Avene. This forced Penn Central to reroute its trains, 20 a day, northwest of Clarke Junction to CP 501.
For East Chicago, it couldn’t come soon enough.
PENN CENTRAL FAILURES
By now, Penn Central was a terrible railroad company with a slew of problems, too many to list. It was described as “busted.” Indeed it was, for it went bankrupt just two years after it was formed.
It was not the employees of the company but management that drove Penn Central straight into the ground. By 1972 it was a joke. The company was in federal receivership and forbidden to spend money without permission. As a result, it had not paid property taxes in three years.
Hyper-focusing on East Chicago, however, Penn Central refused to keep up its crossings. The city council described them as “unkept” and “sloppy” looking.
Citizens complained about the conditions of the newly developed Cal-View Apartments, which Penn Central ran right through the middle of. They compared it to “a garbage dump” and “a garden spot for marijuana.”
They prepared to crack down on these troubled crossings by getting the board of works to repair them since Penn Central wouldn’t do it themselves.
They notified Penn Central, reminded them of their duty to keep up their tracks and right-of-ways, and gave them a deadline. The bankrupt company ignored the deadline (they were broke), and East Chicago shouldered the expense of repairing and cleaning up 33 rail crossings (not all owned by Penn Central).
This was the story involving Penn Central elsewhere in the region as well.
In October, Penn Central filed a petition to close 169 freight stations, 10 of which were in the Calumet region. The stations were at Hammond, East Chicago, Indiana Harbor, Whiting, Gary, Hobart, Valparaiso, Crown Point, LaPorte, and Fowler. All closed in November.
East Chicago was still buying property from Penn Central until this point. Purchasing all the land that its tracks sat upon was of high priority. Though Cal-View had fallen into mismanagement and disrepair, the city was still hell-bent on redeveloping the Penn Central tracks into a park and expanding its urban renewal project to build more low-income housing along Guthrie.
East Chicago’s Redevelopment Commission hired a consultant, Clyde Williams and Associates of Indiana, South Bend, Terre Haute, and Columbus, Ohio, to plan the relocation of the Penn Central railroad tracks for the Cline Avenue extension. They were paid $17,500, and the planning would be completed in 60 days.
Also, the city had to form a non-profit company to skirt Indiana law regarding cities building railroads. The project, in total, cost $3.4 million. That would be $20 million in today’s money. New signaling and switching would be the bulk of the cost, as well as demanding union wages and other work that needed to be done with the land for the new right-of-way.
The Penn Central traffic through East Chicago’s redevelopment tract would be moved to the Baltimore & Ohio tracks, and Baltimore & Ohio traffic would move onto the former New York Central tracks.
END OF THE LINE
In February 1973, Penn Central employees hosted a strike. Over 100,000 strikers systemwide participated, but only 500 in the Calumet region. Still, that was enough to halt Penn Central’s operations. To save money, the company wanted to drop 6700 jobs by cutting the number of brakemen allowed to operate on a train.
It also wanted to lay off 10,000 shop employees throughout its system. The United Transportation Union, a union of different train unions, advocated for the nationalization of Penn Central due to incompetent management. Nationalization was discussed a decade prior.
The AFL-CIO high council came around to nationalizing the railroad networks between St. Louis and Chicago on the Mason-Dixie line and the Atlantic seaboard. The action was needed because all major union contracts with all major railroads east of the Mississippi were due to expire on June 30, 1973. This was the seed planting of what later would become the taxpayer-subsidized consolidated rail company called Conrail.
Penn Central downgraded the Whiting depot in March to a non-agency passenger station. It also revealed that it could not continue to fund the Valparaiso to Chicago passenger service without subsidy. It was in danger of shutting down entirely by October.
By the end of October ’73, Penn Central sent a proposal to Indiana illustrating its desire to eliminate most of its system throughout the state. All legacy lines were slated for abandonment in the Calumet Region, including the entire Ft. Wayne Branch, the Michigan Central, the New York Central, the C&O, and others. Indiana’s governor outright rejected this proposal.
In December, the US Senate passed a salvage bill allowing the US government to set up a private, for-profit corporation that would run a restructured rail network made up of portions of seven different railroads. Due to this company’s creation, all duplicative rail routes under its jurisdiction would be eliminated, and lines that were losing money would be ripped up.
This is important because it affects East Chicago’s drive to purchase the Penn Central right-of-way outright for its urban redevelopment purposes, which could not happen until the spring of 1974.
The city received a grant from the US Housing and Urban Development Department for $8 million. The Ft. Wayne’s tracks were to be ripped up and relocated to other regional railyards. 311 new housing units would be built, including homes and apartments. East Chicago condemned the property between Cline Avenue and Lincoln Avenue.
However, East Chicago once again hit a snag. It turned out that the track was still owned by Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railroad Company, a subsidiary of PRR (used PRR for easier understanding).
P. FW. & C were leasing the physical tracks to Penn Central, which was still running 25 trains a day through East Chicago. Upon hearing the news, Pittsburgh approached negotiations with caution, being that Penn Central was bankrupt and wanted to “get property equally as valuable” as the property they were being asked to abandon — which was appraised at $4 million.
By April 1, 1976, Conrail had begun to eliminate lines in the Calumet region on paper. The Joliet Cutoff and the Erie Lackawanna railroads were the first to be cut.
In March of 1977, Indiana Attorney General Theodore Sendak sent an agreement to relocate the Penn Central, now Conrail tracks, through Indiana Harbor. Three miles of track were slated to be moved.
The consulting agency was not involved anymore. Reports claim that the state of Indiana was behind the design of the reroute, and the work would begin that August. This work was included with the Cline Avenue extension work that was being planned.
By October of 1980, the relocation work still had not been done. The Ft. Wayne Branch was still being used sparingly. Conrail only ran one train a day on the line.
CONCLUSION
This particular abandonment all but disappears from the greater public lexicon after 1980. It is unknown exactly when Conrail filed for abandonment officially. What is known is that the rerouting of the tracks was eventually done, and the Ft. Wayne Branch was abandoned from just west of Clarke Junction in Gary to Whiting.
Years later, the Ft. Wayne from Tolleston to Clarke Junction would also be abandoned, as the final business on that part of the line shut down in 2002.
In the early 90s, the Ft. Wayne from Tolleston to Valparaiso would be abandoned before being revitalized for CF&E.
I wanted to document this abandonment for curious-minded individuals seeking answers to the same questions I had and have.
