Fort Wayne, IN: (NS+CF&E)/Pennsy Piqua Yard

NS part: (Satellite, this used to have the Triple Crown Yard [fwarailfan])

CF&E Part: (Satellite)

Pennsy had a locomotive servicing facility (roundhouse) with a coaling tower west of this yard.

Jim Pearson Photography posted

Chicago, Ft. Wayne and Eastern Railroad locomotives 5597 (ex CP Rail) and 2132 sit in their yard at Ft. Wayne, Indiana as they wait to depart the yard on September 22nd, 2022.

According to Wikipedia: The Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern Railroad (reporting mark CFE) is a short line railroad offering service from Tolleston, Indiana to Crestline, Ohio, United States over the former Fort Wayne Line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It began operations in 2004 as a division of the Central Railroad of Indianapolis, under the overall corporate ownership of RailAmerica. CFE operates 273 miles of rail leased from CSX.

On July 23, 2012, Genesee & Wyoming Inc. announced that it intended to purchase RailAmerica in a deal valued at $1.39 billion.  Approval of the purchase was granted by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board on December 19, 2012, and ownership of the Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern was transferred to the G&W.

Tech Info: DJI Mavic Air 2S Drone, RAW, 22mm, f/2.8, 1/3000, ISO 100.

https://fineartamerica.com/.../chicago-ft-wayne-and...

Dennis DeBruler commented on Jim's post
Thanks to the tower on the former International Harvester building in the background, this facility was easy to locate.
https://www.google.com/.../data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4...

Street View, Jun 2019
"Piqua Yard (locally pronounced Pik-Way) is hardly the place it used to be.  After Conrail was formed in 1976 the yard took on less importance and many of the tracks were pulled up.  Today just a few tracks are left and are used fairly often.  There are no locomotive servicing facilites at Piqua Yard and refueling is done using trucks.  This is the RailAmerica Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern Railroad office and crew base (former Conrail) in Fort Wayne located next to the Wayne Trace/Pontiac St. viaduct.  This building used to be the hump tower for Piqua Yard." [fwarailfan]

I could not find the hump yard tower in 1951.

EarthExplorer: Mar 27, 1951 @ 28,400, AR1PJ0000010069

According to the above street view, the tower does look relatively new, so I found a 1979 aerial photo. The backshops have been cut back quite a bit. The hump yard is not very wide, but I believe it was on the west side of the Pontiac+Wayne Trace underpass. I saw a railfan photo that reinforced that the hump yard was on the west side because it indicated the hump lead was the north track of the east side.

EarthExplorer: Nov 1, 1979 @ 80,000, AR1VERP00010112

CSX did not want the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway route that it was given when Conrail was split up. So it now leases that Pennsy route to Chicago, Fort Wayne & Eastern. And it leases the east side of Piqua Yard to CFW&E. Norfolk Southern leases the west side. NS had used the southern five tracks for a Triple Crown Yard.

January 18, 2008

Wow, so much for a webmaster, huh? As you can see I haven't updated this homepage in well over a year now, since August 2006. Well I can say there's been many changes in the railroad world around Ft Wayne since then. Probably the most notable thing has been NS adding a second lead track to the Triple Crown track adjacent to the CF&E shortline yard. This has enabled Triple Crown & NS to get trains off of the mainline in the event that Triple Crown isn't quite ready for a train, which frequently happens at night when the yard is the busiest. A diagram of the new lead and how NS accesses the yard can be viewed here. A look at the west end of the yard at Mike can be found here.

[fwarailfan news page]

First "here" link above

Second "here" link above

Was Piqua tower somewhere here?

Steve Redinbo commented on Ken Kieley Jr.'s post

CF&E using an old Conrail caboose as a shack