Frankfort, IN: Railroad Hub

Doug Ingersoll posted

I knew the east/west route through Frankfort was NS/NKP, but when I looked at a railroad atlas to determine the north/south route, I was surprised to find that there used to be two north/south routes --- Monon and Pennsy. Furthermore, the NKP route through town carried both the Cloverleaf and the Lake Erie & Western parts of NKP.

Larry Wojcik commented
2016, that awesome signal still
doing its job!

Even INDOT's map (below) is wrong because it does not include a Pennsy route to the southwest. I have added that line plus labels indicating who owns or who abandoned each spoke and who owned the railroad in 1928. The "*" is a Pennsy route that is now (as of 2005) operated by CSX and CIND. CIND was Central Railroad of Indiana, which is a RailAmerica subsidiary operated by Indiana & Ohio Railway.

INDOT

Pennsy north of Frankfort was abandoned by Conrail, but according to a satellite image, the track through town is still intact. There are no industries along that track, so why are all of those road crossings and the diamond still maintained? The reason is probably because the interchange track between NS and CSX is in the northwest quadrant of the junction. Also note that NKP/CL extends west to here to serve several industries on the west side of the town. I saw covered hoppers spotted at two of the industries, so I don't think that Cloverleaf remnant is currently abandoned as indicated by the INDOT map.

To the satellite image below, I added a blue line to indicate where the former PC/PRR route was and a red line to indicate how Monon ran through town. I found a 1980 topo map on historicaerials.com to confirm the Monon did street running up 5th Street.

Satellite plus Paint

Update:

Carl Venzke posted
Nickel Plate engine 720 is crossing the Pennsy’s Indianapolis to Logansport line at Frankfort, Indiana on August 11, 1954. In a few hours the train will be pulling into Lima, Ohio. There is nothing remarkable about this picture except you gotta love that tower. Photo courtesy of the Nickel Plate Road Historical & Technical Society

Dennis DeBruler posted
Brian Knight posted with the comment: "Back in the days when we got on and off the caboose on the fly. Frankfort Indiana probably late 80's."
Jim McLinn

I remember in conductors school, if you couldn't get off and on moving equipment, you were let go right away. That was the first few days of school,and they taught you the right way and the wrong way, but if you couldn't do right, you were out of there.

Now days they fire you if you do get off when it's not at a complete stop. Crazy stuff at times.

Walter Borys

Long but fascinating Training video (1972) on right and wrong ways to mount a train

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rx57jVGfso