Limedale, IN: Junction Tower: Monon vs. Pennsy and Buzzi Unicem Cement Plant

(Satellite)

Carl Venzke posted
Pennsy and Monon crossing at Limedale, Indiana. An interlocking tower and station are nestled between the tracks where the Monon crosses the two tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Love this shot 😉 Look and you can see a train on the Monon.

Jose Vicente Sendin also posted
Pennsy and Monon crossing at Limedale, Indiana. An interlocking tower and station are nestled between the tracks where the Monon crosses the two tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Danny Bryant A good place to be careful.

Darren Reynolds posted

"Limedale" tower before siding.... a classic PRR tower 

Photo by: Frank Garon Collection

Tim Shanahan shared

 

IRM Strahorn Library posted

PRR - Monon Crossing, Limedale, Ind.

John W. Barriger III assumed the presidency of the Monon in 1946.  He aggressively dieselized the line, replacing aging steam power with modern units from the Electro-Motive Division (EMD) of General Motors and the American Locomotive Company (Alco).

Barriger commissioned Howard Fogg to paint the Monon not as it was (often traversing flat, corn-stubbled fields) but as it felt: dynamic, powerful, and inextricably linked to the Indiana landscape.

Monon’s freight Alco-GE RS 2s were numbered in the 21–29 series. 

Illinois Railway Museum Strahorn Library Postcard Collection.

The Strahorn Library houses thousands of books, tens of thousands of periodicals and more than a hundred thousand photographs, all centering on the subject of trains and railroading and all held to support research and scholarship into the railroad history of the United States.

The Strahorn Library is at 118 E. Washington Street in Marengo, Illinois. It is normally open from 10AM to 2:30PM on Wednesdays and visitors are welcome. For those unable to visit, we can provide access to our collections via telephone (815-568-1060), e-mail (strahorn@irm.org), or online catalog (librarycat.org/lib/IRMStrahornLibrary).

All materials are available for non-commercial purposes, and according to the “fair use” provision of the U.S. Copyright Law which permits use of copyrighted material for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research.

The tower was on the south side of the junction, and a 1969 aerial photo confirms that the five smokestacks on the right side of the photo were part of an earlier version of the cement plant. Evidently, after the quarry grew, they moved the plant so that they could use more modern methods and to shorten the truck runs.

The Pennsy was abandoned by Conrail because it was redundant with the NYC/Big Four route just north of it and NYC had the big Avon Yard west of Indianapolis. The short line Terre Haute, Brazil & Eastern (TBER) was formed to save the Pennsy route between Terre Haute and the cement plant that is south and east of Limedale. But the TBER was abandoned by 2005. CSX got the NYC route when Conrail was split up. CSX also has the Monon route because L&N bought it.  The former-Monon route looks better on the Bing aerial than on the Google image because of tree shadows on the Google image. When I first looked at the Google satellite image, I thought that CSX was letting this route fall apart. But the ballast does look fresh (white).