Moving Day in Union City

Years of planning and fundraising paid off in Union City, Indiana, on Tuesday when a moving company moved the town’s railroad interlocking tower about a block west to a park.

The brick tower, which closed in 1968, once controlled the crossing of the New York Central”s (Big Four) Cleveland-Indianapolis line with the Pennsylvania Railroad’s (Panhandle) Columbus-Logansport, Indiana, line.

Local interests raised more than $56,000 which was matched by a $50,000 grant from the Indiana Housing and Community Development Agency.

Union City, located on the Indiana-Ohio border, had faced a late March deadline to commit to moving the tower or else it would be razed by CSX.

The former Pennsy line through Union City is gone, but the former NYC line is today the Indianapolis Line of CSX.

Three city streets were closed so the tower could be move on dollies by Wolfe House & Building Movers.

The tower is slated to be restored with the lower level being used as a visitor center with restrooms, and the upper level returned to its appearance when the tower was still open.

It is located in the southwest corner of Artisan Crossing park and faces the CSX tracks in the same manner that it did before it was moved. The park is adjacent to the CSX Indianapolis Line and across the street from the restored former PRR passenger station.

In the top image, the tower is being wheeled west on Pearl Street. The bottom image shows the tower in its final resting place.

Union City Tower to Move July 27

The former railroad interlocking tower in Union City, Indiana, is scheduled to be moved to a new location on July 27.

The tower was saved after a lengthy fundraising drive. It will be moved one block west to a city park.

The city plans to have a festival on the moving day that will include food trucks and other activities.

Now located adjacent to the CSX Indianapolis Line, the tower once guarded the crossing of the former New York Central (Big Four) and Pennsylvania (Panhandle) railroads.

The former Pennsy route from Columbus to Logansport, Indiana, is abandoned through Union City.

Union City, located on the Indiana-Ohio border, still has its PRR passenger station, which has been restored and is now used as an arts center.

Indiana Town Raises Enough Money to Save Tower

An Indiana city has reached its funding goal to save a former railroad interlocking tower.

Union City reported on its website that with eight days left in its fundraising campaign it has raised $53,630, which exceeds its goal of $50.

The project involves moving the tower, which currently stands next to the CSX Indianapolis Line.

The tower once controlled a crossing of a the former New York Central (Big Four) line between Cleveland and Indianapolis with a former Pennsylvania Railroad line (Panhandle) between Columbus and Logansport, Indiana.

Having met its initial goal, Union City has now expanded its goal to $60,000.

The money will be used to move the tower 525 feet to a new location a short distance from the tracks in an existing park.

Money raised by the Union City fundraising drive will be matched by the Indiana Housing Community Development Agency.

More information about the fundraising drive and plans to move the tower is available at https://www.patronicity.com/project/save_the_rail_tower

Indiana City Raising Money to Save Interlocking Tower

A westbound CSX auto rack train passes the Union City Tower in September 2019.

City officials in Union City, Indiana, have stepped up their campaign to save a railroad interlocking tower from being razed by CSX.

The tower once guarded a crossing of New York Central (Big) and Pennsylvania Railroad routes.

The “Save the Rail” campaign needs to raise $50,000 by March 25 to have enough funding to move the tower away from its current location next to the Indianapolis Line of CSX, which formerly was a Big Four route extending from Cleveland to St. Louis.

The former PRR route between Columbus and Logansport, Indiana, through Union City has been abandoned.

If Union City interests can meet their goal, the project will receive a $50,000 matching grant.

The city wants to move the brick tower a few hundred feet to Artisan Crossing Park where it would become a multipurpose building.

Thus far the fund-raising campaign has raise about $8,000.

Union City is two contiguous municipalities, one of which is located in Ohio.

One of Those Days

The weather forecast called for the day to begin with sunny skies but for clouds to move in during the afternoon ahead of a front that would bring rain on Monday.

Based on that I headed for Union City, Indiana, to railfan the CSX Indianapolis line.

It turns out I should have gone there the day before when it was sunny all day although a little cold.

That’s because the the day I was out turned out to be one of those days where the weather was the opposite of what had been predicted. We’ve all had those days, right?

I remember an Akron Railroad Club longest day outing to Deshler in June 2007 when the forecast was for mostly sunny skies.

But as we made our way west on the Ohio Turnpike, the clouds kept increasing and by the time we made it to Deshler it was overcast with occasional rain.

Railfanning in Union City always is something of a gamble. The Indianapolis Line is moderately busy but moody. If you are patient you’ll get some trains but you will also have long periods of nothing.

I’m still learning the traffic patterns of the Indy Line, but I knew I could count on seeing the Q008 sometime in the morning.

My limited experience with the Indianapolis Line is that it tends to be busier in the morning than the afternoon.

I arrived around 8:30 a.m. Indiana Route 32 runs parallel to the Indy Line east of Muncie and I saw two westbounds as I was driving, including a stack train and a monster manifest freight with a DPU toward the center.

I also saw a beautiful sunrise, which was a clue that the morning weather was not going to be what I had expected.

It was beautiful because it illuminate the edge of a cloud cover that extended way back to the west. Sure enough once the sun got over the horizon it was swallowed by the clouds.

I had about an hour wait before seeing my first train, the Q364, a manifest that originates at Avon Yard west of Indianapolis and goes to Selkirk Yard via Cleveland (middle photo above).

Nearly an hour later the detector at Harrisville, Indiana, went off, heralding the approach of another eastbound.

The Harrisville detector gives the direction of travel of the trains as well as the track number and axle count.

I was listening for the Q008 (bottom photo) to call the signal for the west end of the Union City crossovers, but my “warning” that its arrival was imminent was when the crossing gates started going down at the Howard Street crossing.

I was sitting at a former Pennsylvania Railroad passenger station that has been preserved as a community center known as the Arts Depot.

The former PRR tracks, which were part of the Pan Handle route between Columbus and Chicago, are long gone and the CSX Indianapolis Line is former New York Central territory.

I’ve been told that a former Pennsy man who served as superintendent of the Southern Region of Penn Central left behind another PRR tradition.

During the PC era the track numbering of the ex-NYC line between Cleveland and Indianapolis was changed so that the westbound main became Track 2 rather than Track 1 as it had been under NYC control.

The Q008 was on Track 2 whereas all other eastbounds I saw on this day were on Track 1, which in NYC days was Track 2.

Apparently the dispatcher had run the Q008 around another train west of Union City or planned to do so east of there.

I never did hear the Q008 crew calling any signals so they either were not doing it or doing it in such a way that my scanner didn’t pick it up.

After the passage of the Q008 I checked the weather forecast for Union City and found it had been revised to predict sunny skies in the afternoon.

That did happen. The clouds moved out about 1:30 p.m. By then I had seen four more trains, including a pair of auto racks trains in each direction (the Q217 and Q262), the Q348 (top photo) and a local whose symbol I didn’t catch because the crew’s radio calls were barely audible.

The Q348 would be the last train I would photograph. It’s a manifest freight that originates in Avon Yard and runs to Cumberland, Maryland.

About the time the sun came out for good CSX traffic died.

I ventured east of Union City into Ohio to scout for photograph locations.

The good news was that some block signals are located at grade crossings. The bad news was that those signals were dark.

I got as far as Ansonia, Ohio, which at one time was the junction of two NYC routes. Today, only a portion of the north-south route is left.

It goes as far south as Greenville and a no trespassing sign I saw as I crossed that route on a country road indicates it is owned by R.J. Corman.

I returned to Union City where I sat for another hour and a half and got nothing. There was not as much as a peep on the radio.

I was a little surprised by that because last September I had spent an afternoon in Union City and seen a few trains before the dinner hour.

I gave up and headed home at 4 p.m. It wasn’t a wasted day as I had seen eight trains total. But all of them had run under the clouds.

Like I said, it had been one of those days.

Getting it While I Can

Interlocking towers once dotted the railroad landscape in large numbers.

But the vast majority of them have been closed and their functions of lining switches and signals transferred to a dispatcher’s desk hundreds if not thousands of miles away.

Railroads generally don’t like to let vacant building stand unused next to their rights of ways so scores of former interlocking towers have fallen victim to the wrecking ball or a front end loader.

Somehow the tower in Union City, Indiana, has survived. But it may be living on borrowed time.

At one time, Union City Tower guarded the crossing of the Pennsylvania Railroad (Pan Handle) route between Chicago and Columbus, Ohio, of the New York Central (Big Four) route between Cleveland and St. Louis.

The two railroads crossed at a sharp angle by Columbia Street. In fact the crossing was movable switch points rather than a set of diamonds for the double track mainlines of both railroads.

The tower closed in 1968 and changing traffic patterns led to the abandonment by Conrail of the former PRR line through Union City.

But the tower remained standing. CSX would like to knock it down, but is willing to allow Union City interests to have it provided that they move it at least 50 feet back from the tracks.

The cost to do that is $60,000 and the city doesn’t have that kind of money. There is a fund raising campaign underway but small towns struggle to raise that level of money.

The latest report is that the city hopes to talk CSX into allowing the tower to remain in its current location but be surrounded by a fence.

The railroads is willing for now to give the city more time to raise money to pay to move the tower and its uncertain how it will respond to the fence idea.

Union City has been told that the tower is off the demolition list, at least for now.

But just this past July IU Tower in downtown Indianapolis and railroads, like any other company, can be notorious for doing what they want with their property.

Nostalgia and history don’t contribute to revenues, increase stock prices or help pay dividends to stockholders.

During a recent outing to Union City I made sure to capture a train passing the tower.

The auto rack train is headed westbound on the Indianapolis Line. I hope that it is not the last image I made of this tower, but you never know.

Blank for 48 Years Now

This former train bulletin board that once hung on the wall of the passenger station in Union City, Indiana, is a relic frozen in time.

The station where it hung was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad to serve passenger trains on the Pan Handle line between Chicago and Columbus.

But trains of the New York Central also called at the depot. But note that the train bulletin refers to the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis, .a.k.a. the Big Four and not the New York Central.

That might have seemed confusing to passengers expecting to see New York Central, particularly given that the Big Four became part of the NYC system in 1906.

But the Big Four operated autonomously into the 1930s and even then many along its routes continued to remember the Big Four name.

The PRR’s marquee trains between Chicago and Columbus were the daylight Fort Hayes and the overnight Ohioan.

The Fort Hayes ended on Oct. 28, 1956. The Ohioan name was dropped in April 1958. On the last day of 1958 the former Ohioan was discontinued, leaving the Pan Handle through Union City freight only.

The NYC continue to host a fleet of trains that ran between Cleveland and St. Louis.

Union City would become a footnote in the Central’s efforts to do away with passenger trains on its St. Louis line.

The Central ended the Knickerbocker (westbound) and Southwestern (eastbound) between Cleveland and Union City, Indiana, on Sept. 6, 1967.

It was able to do this without regulatory approval because the Public Service Commission of Ohio allowed railroads to discontinue passengers trains within the state provided they are not the last varnish on a route.

The Central’s action left now unnamed Nos. 312 and 341 as Union City-St. Louis trains of one passenger coach pulled by a lone E unit.

In practice, this train actually originated and terminated in Bellfontaine, Ohio, but did not carry passengers between Bellefontaine and Union City.

This state of affairs continued until Nos. 312 and 341 made their last trips on March 18, 1968.

That left unnamed Nos. 315 and 316 operating through Union City as they traversed their route between Cleveland and Indianapolis.

These trains had survived as long as they did because of their heavy mail business.

No. 315 departed Cleveland Union Terminal every night at 11:50 and was scheduled to arrive at Indianapolis Union Station the next morning at 6:05 a.m. This train was not scheduled to stop in Union City.

The equipment turned and departed Indy at 9:35 a.m. with a flag stop in Union City at 11:30 a.m. No. 316 was scheduled to arrive in Cleveland at 4:05 p.m.

The planners who created Amtrak probably gave little thought to saving trains 315 and 316 and they began their final trips on April 30, 1971.

And with that this train bulletin board was wiped clean for good.

If you look carefully you might see that at some point some wag wrote “Hogwarts Express” as an eastbound Big Four train bound for London.

It is noteworthy that the bulletin board has room for more Big Four trains than PRR trains.

Tthat probably reflects the reality that the NYC had more trains through Union City and then did the Pennsy.

Although some railfans refer to the Union City station as the former Pennsylvania Railroad station the town calls it the Union City Arts Depot.

That’s because it is an all-purpose community center that happens to have a railroad history.

I have to wonder how many people in Union City know much about that railroad history.

A Nice Sunday With CSX in Union City

Westbound Q007 passes the former Union City tower in a view taken at the North Columbia Street grade crossing on the north side of the tracks.

Union City is a small town that straddles the border of Indiana and Ohio. It’s a nice place to railfan because it has a restored passenger station that once served the Pennsylvania and New York Central. The interlocking tower that once controlled the crossing of the two railroads also still stands although it closed in about 1969.

The PRR route was the ex-Panhandle between Columbus and Chicago (via Logansport, Ind.). The NYC route was the Cleveland-St. Louis route of the ex-Big Four (via Indianapolis). The Baltimore & Ohio once had a branch from
Dayton to Union City (ex-Dayton & Union) that terminated here.

Major changes began to occur during the Penn Central era when PC created a Columbus-Indianapolis route that involved the ex-NYC west of Union City and the ex-PRR east of there via Bradford, Ohio.

This enabled the PC to downgrade the ex-PRR line between Bradford and New Paris, Ohio., and even the predominantly passenger route between New Paris and Dayton. During the Conrail era there were massive route reductions and when the dust had settled the ex-PRR route through Union City was gone. The last B&O train to Union City ran in 1964.

Also ripped up were both ex-PRR routes that operated through New Paris. I spent part of Sunday morning and afternoon in Union City earlier this week on my return home from a trip to East Central Illinois.

Traffic seemed to be steady during my four hours there with eight trains rolling through town. Five of those trains were headed west. I understand, though, that the Indianapolis Line can have some very long lull periods.

The last passenger trains to pass through here were Penn Central Nos. 315/316, which were predominantly mail and express trains and both former NYC trains. No. 315 was once the Cleveland to St. Louis Gateway while No. 316 was the former Cleveland Special.

In their final years, the head end business had pretty much dried up and few passengers rode the lone coach on the train.

No. 315 would depart Cleveland just before midnight and arrive in Indianapolis just after 6 a.m. Some 3.5 hours later, the train would depart as No. 316 for Cleveland. The Official Guide for April 1971 shows that No. 315 did not stop for passengers in Union City.

The last Pennsy passenger train to serve Union City was the Chicago-Columbus Ohioan, which was discontinued on Dec. 31, 1958.

Union City briefly served as the eastern terminus of NYC passenger trains 312 and 314, the Southwestern and Knickerbocker respectively.

In late 1967, the NYC discontinued the trains in Ohio, which made them St. Louis-Union City, Ind., trains. In practice, the equipment ran empty between Union City and Bellefontaine, Ohio, where at the latter there were service facilities . The trains made their final trips on March 18, 1968. By then they were one E unit and one coach.

Although I’d like to get back to Union City, it’s a long trip from the Cleveland-Akron area. Chances are my next visit to Union City will occur during another trip through this region for other purposes.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

On the south side of the tracks is a McDonalds with a parking lot that backs up to the railroad. I was standing on the edge of that lot when I took this photo of this westbound with a load of boxcars. I think its symbol was Q233.

Union City tower is partly visible in a telephoto shot taken from the North Howard Street crossing. The Q131 had a load of all Pacer Stack Train containers.

Safetran signals have yet to replace the NYC/Conrail style signals at CP 198, which is a set of crossovers located just west of the Union City tower. But, no doubt, these signals will not be around much longer. Shown is eastbound Q008 splitting the signals and crossing North Walnut Street.

The restored union station is now known as the Arts Depot. It now houses offices and galleries of the Art Association of Randolph County.

A westbound coal hoppers train passes the depot in a view taken from the west end.

CSX crews were out doing track work on Sunday. A work “train” rolled past carrying cars containing ties that the gang was dropping from Track No. 2 from milepost 199 on west. Although these are ex-NYC tracks, the numbering follows the PRR custom of Track No. 1 being the traditional westbound track and No. 2 being the eastbound track.

I had heard this “train” get an EC-1 and then receive verbal permission over the radio from a foreman to enter the work limits from MP 199 to MP 204. The “train” originated at Ansonia, Ohio, and as it rolled into town its horn sounded a lot like a diesel’s air horn. So imagine my surprise to see the power for this “train” being a Brandt truck.

This transfer caboose is on display at the depot. I am not sure if these are true Penn Central colors because most PC equipment that I remembered seeing was painted in a shade of green that differed from the NYC’s jade green. I’m not sure it is true Pennsy Tuscan red, either. I am quite sure, though, that the PC logo is not quite historically accurate because the “mating worms” are too squat.