An L&I Two for Tuesday

Indiana short line Louisville & Indiana operates over a former Pennsylvania Railroad route that it has chosen to honor with a locomotive livery that resembles that of the Pennsy.

The railroad, based in Jeffersonville, Indiana, operates on a route between Indianapolis and Jeffersonville that once hosted the South Wind and Kentuckian. The former ran between Chicago and Florida while the latter was an overnight Chicago-Louisville train.

It never was a major PRR artery although it hauled its share of freight that interchanged in Louisville with southern railroads.

Shown is a southbound L&I train passing through Franklin, Indiana, the county seat of Johnson County. Much of the northern half of the county forms the southern region of the greater Indianapolis metropolitan area.

To get these images I had to wait for a few hours in a public park near downtown. I could hear the crew talking on the radio during much of that time as they worked in an industrial park north of town.

At one point they had to clear the main to allow a northbound CSX train to pass. CSX operates a few trains between Indianapolis and Louisville over the L&I.

The original plan for the crew had been to go into Indy after finishing their work in Franklin and interchange cars with the Indiana Railroad. Had they stuck with that plan I likely would not have been able to get these photographs.

But the work in Franklin apparently took longer than expected for whatever reasons and the dispatcher decided to direct them to leave their INDR cars on a siding in the industrial park and head back to their base in Columbus. Thus my patience was rewarded.

I haven’t been back to the L&I since getting these images. That will have to wait for another day, probably next spring. But I will be back.

Tags: Franklin Indiana, Indiana short line railroads, Louisville & Indiana Railroad, Pennsylvania Railroad, SD40-2 locomotives