Paul Minor

Delving Into Yester~Year

Local historian and writer Paul Miner takes items from The Republican’s Yester-Year column to develop an interesting, informative and often humorous article.

To the Editor:

Memories some consider acute often are fogged by time’s distance. Only through checking did I discover such was the case in March 1888 when “Uncle” Billy Baugh recalled the first run of the Vandalia train from Indianapolis to Terre Haute.

Billy told a Terre Haute reporter the debut was March 4, 1852. Naturally, since the Vandalia, then called the Terre Haute & Indianapolis, ran through Hendricks County, I searched the papers for accounts of that day.

I learned Billy was wrong. The trains were running by February that year; the final rail had been laid by mid-month and an entire train of cars promptly passed over the span February 16.

Newspaper accounts reveal roughly a mile of track was laid each day as completion neared.

One subsequent report declared the tracks were “in a wretched condition,” but the line daily carried 200 passengers east and west.

Billy claimed the first train of one coach and 10 box cars left Indianapolis at 7 a.m. with him at the throttle of “Henry Clay,” and crewed with a fireman and conductor.

At Coatesville, a car loaded with poultry was added. At Staunton, a coal car was coupled in front of the locomotive.

The train arrived in Terre Haute at 4 p.m. – a nine-hour trip. Seems slow, even for those times.

TH&I owned nine other engines, drably called Vigo, Terre Haute, Hendricks, Indianapolis, Putnam, Marion, Kentucky, Illinois and Ohio. Any nicknames were not recalled.

Train speeds increased substantially over time. Vandalia Passenger No. 20 made the three-mile trip between Coatesville and Amo in “exactly” two minutes, 30 seconds, in June 1888. The “flying run” between Terre Haute and Indianapolis, 73 miles, consumed an hour and 45 minutes.

I wonder whether that first TH&I coach car was as “elegant and commodious” as one made in February 1852 for the Terre Haute & Richmond line.

Joseph Farnsworth and William Vincent Clough’s new Southwest Car Shop in Madison had built a car “with the especial design of attaining the greatest perfection in both material and construction.” It was “unsurpassed” in both “appearance and style of finish.” Everyone says that, then and now. The car had 15 India rubber spring supports and its design of “free, lateral swinging motion” resulted in “obviating the unpleasant jar” of other coaches. One man had painted and gilded the coach while another had completed graining and eight landscapes.

Stage-delivered mail delays arose in April that year. Sending mail by the TH&I was far faster, allowing correspondence arriving in Terre Haute in the afternoon to receive responses that evening. The article failed to clarify why the stage line was still carrying the mail. Maps from 1865 reveal to some degree what Hendricks County towns on the rail line were like 13 years afterward. Amo was largely built on the north side of the rail line. North to south, the town had

North, Sycamore, Main and Railroad Streets. West to east were Vine, Pearl and Walnut. M.G. Parker at the northeast corner of Main and Walnut, was town physician and surgeon, although he later relocated to Danville. B.F. Scherer’s Amo Mills was just east of the depot. Cartersburg was much larger, at least on paper, as almost 200 building sites were platted on both sides of the rail line. Forty-nine sites were shown at Cincinnatus. Clayton had its own siding, where the express office and A.S. Wills’ woolen factory were found.

Coatesville was still called West Milton in 1865; it was mostly north of the tracks. A water tank was just east of town. A hotel was found then and even some 20 years later just west of where the siding split from the tracks.

Pecksburg was evenly split by the line, with the Lutheran church on the north and the school on the south. Two county roads intersected just south of the tracks.

Plainfield was almost entirely south of the tracks, with a steam planing mill and furniture factory just west of the depot. The tracks crossed the Plank Road at Six Points east of Plainfield. Anyone with a particularly ponderous bent can visit the county website’s on-line archives (scroll to “maps”) and pore over five 1916 Vandalia Railroad maps as the line wends through our territory.

Paul Miner Lizton ______________________________________________________________________