Transition at Templeton
WHEN THE PAST MASQUERADED AS THE FUTURE IN THE CABS OF TWO EARLY AMTRAK TRAINS //
When the past masqueraded as the future in the cabs of two early Amtrak trains
THIS IS A STORY ABOUT one of my favorite railroads (with emphasis on an especially interesting part of it), a favorite passenger train, and a favorite locomotive engineer — and the events that blended all three in a never-to-be-forgotten experience on the first day of 1972.
The favorite railroad was the Indianapolis–Kankakee segment of the New York Central’s Cincinnati–Chicago corridor, the northern half of the carrier’s Indiana Division. The especially interesting part was known as the TA Double — almost 23 miles of double track bracketing Lafayette, Ind., that combined curving grades on both sides of the Wabash River bridge with an exhilarating stretch of tangent, high-speed running to the west.
Unknown to most riders of the numerous NYC passenger trains that traversed this line in its busiest years, almost all of the TA Double was the property of another railroad. Forerunners of the Nickel Plate Road built the original line and expanded it over the years to accommodate the Central’s predecessor companies through joint-trackage agreements. For more than a century this relatively short, shared double track between Templeton and Altamont, Ind., was an intriguing — and busy — anomaly of Midwestern railroading. After World War II, host Nickel Plate was operating five regularly scheduled daily freights and extra “switch locals” across the TA Double, plus two Lima–Peoria daily passenger locals. Tenant New York Central, by comparison, operated as many as 12 scheduled passenger trains (down from a 1916 peak of 17) and 10 extra freight trains each day.
The favorite passenger train was the
Central’s James Whitcomb Riley, the Indiana Division’s signature limited, inaugurated in 1941 and named for the state’s poet laureate. Following a 1948 reequipping, the Riley featured an all-stainless steel consist of reserved-seat coaches, full dining car, and a round-end tavern-lounge-observation car, typically accented by a through Chicago–Newport News Chesapeake & Ohio sleeper and, until dieselization in 1956, a Hudson on the point. After the 1968 Penn Central merger the Riley survived as the last passenger train on the division and, ultimately, the last named train on PC’s ex-NYC lines.
And the favorite engineer: Charles P. McMahon, known to his many friends as “Bud.” Articulate and well versed in many aspects of life, Bud was the proud patriarch of a large family and a respected Indiana Division engineman with diplomatic skills shaped through leadership roles in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. By the mid-1960s he was one of the senior engineers on the Riley — and a valued acquaintance of those of us who maintained a small fleet of private passenger cars at Indianapolis Union Station. After Amtrak began operations in 1971, Bud continued to run both the Riley and the new Floridian, Amtrak’s replacement for the former Seaboard
Coast Line-Louisville & Nashville-Penn Central South Wind train between Chicago and Miami.
NEW YEAR’S ADVENTURE
An impromptu invitation to join Bud for a whirlwind cab-ride journey aboard those two trains brought Jay Williams, Dick Pearson, and myself to Union Station in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 1972. Shivering on a frosty platform, we watched in muffled anticipation as the bright headlight beam of the arriving Floridian illuminated the rafters and columns of the trainshed. After the long consist squealed to a stop, brief greetings were exchanged between incoming and outgoing engine crews before Bud ushered us up the cab ladder of a tarnished and tired ex-NYC E7.
Far down the lonely platform, a trainman stepped up to a sleeper vestibule and slammed the trap shut. Bud snapped off the cab lights and waited for the dwarf signal before us to flip from red to yellow-over-red. Releasing the brakes sent a shock wave of air through the cab, followed by the roar of three E units “loading up” beneath the trainshed.
As the Floridian picked its way through the snow-packed puzzle switches at the west throat of the Union Station trackage, we cab visitors were pleased to see that our train was lined for the traditional Indiana Division routing to Chicago. Following the PC merger, most Chicago-bound passenger trains leaving Indianapolis were dispatched southwest on the former Pennsylvania Railroad St. Louis main to Davis Tower on the west side of the city, then north on the ex-PRR Indianapolis–Frankfort “I&F” division to Lebanon, where a cutoff descended from the elevated PRR to the original NYC route. At the dispatcher’s discretion, however, trains could still be routed directly over the NYC “old way,” as crews described it.
Departing the darkened city, Bud took a few more notches on the throttle to reach mainline track speed and began tugging harder on the horn cord. The E7, past its prime, seemed to groan as its workload increased. The diesel still had its original, single-note air horn, and as its “Bammmmmp” message reverberated off trackside buildings Bud observed that it sounded “like a lovesick bull moose.”
Twenty years earlier, the steam-powered Riley had been scheduled to cover the 64.4 miles between Indianapolis Union Station and Lafayette in 62 minutes, including urban speed restrictions — fast running by any standard. Our already-late Floridian was carded for 90 minutes on this segment, and increasing numbers of slow orders created through Penn Central’s deferred track mainte
nance added even more time to the trip.
We eventually reached the TA Double at Altamont and descended into Lafayette on the former Nickel Plate trackage (Norfolk & Western after 1964) as the first suggestions of dawn appeared in the eastern sky. During the station stop we three “deadheads” yielded to the realities of exhaustion and retreated to the two trailing ex-Louisville & Nashville E units for an hour or so of fitful cab-seat napping, unaided by increasingly bright morning sunlight and bumpy PC track west of Templeton.
Our destination city of Kankakee marked the western end of the Indiana Division. Here the NYC had joined the Illinois Central for trackage-rights operation to Chicago, and here the engine crews yielded their cabs to IC men, although conductors and brakemen continued on to the end of the runs at Central Station.
After the Floridian eased to a stop, we each made our way down the cab ladders, again offering greetings to men we didn’t know — in this case, the IC crew ready to coax a strong performance out of the aged E7 and its mates for the highspeed dash to Chicago. It was easy to read the expressions on the faces of the IC men: “Who are these guys? Never saw them before!” Never would again, either.
Long before the train departed, our group was rolling away in a taxicab, bound for the comforts of the seven-story Hotel Kankakee and five of its guest rooms. After much-needed sleep and hot showers, we reconvened in the hotel’s dining room to feast from a New Year’s Day buffet, another welcome addition to our itinerary.
Refreshed, cleansed, and nourished, we piled into another taxi and returned to the railroad, ready for the return trip — this time on Amtrak’s interpretation of the Riley, which the new carrier had combined with the George Washington between Cincinnati and Washington. Now the train, confusingly, carried the old NYC name westbound and the former C&O name eastbound, prompting some wags to call it “The George Riley” or the “Riley/George.” To Indiana Division crews it was still simply “the Riley.” Whatever the name, the effects of Amtrak’s “rainbow era” had become apparent as consists lengthened and once-foreign power and cars appeared, including ex-Great Northern and ex-Northern Pacific dome coaches, ex-C&O Club-series flat-end diner-lounge-observations and, occasionally, ex-Santa Fe dining cars.
When that evening’s holiday-length version of the train — two E units and about 10 cars — rolled to a stop before us, Bud again exchanged warm greetings with an IC crew, and again Jay, Dick and I smiled and nodded.
“Who are these guys? Never saw ’em before.” Never would again, either.
EASTBOUND TO INDY
Moments later we were huddled in the cab of ex-Baltimore & Ohio E8 1439, just in from a fast trip down the northernmost segment of the Illinois Central main line and ready to lead this hybrid Amtrak
hundreds of additional miles on former NYC, NKP, and PRR trackage, finishing with stints on C&O and Southern. When two shrill chirps sounded from the trainman’s communication whistle above his head, Bud bailed off the air and latched back the throttle. Darkness again descended upon our journey as we accelerated across the icy Kankakee River and turned toward home.
As we rolled through fallow farmlands and a scattering of towns, I learned Bud had hired on at the NYC’s Shelby Street roundhouse in Indianapolis in 1941, then served in the Army during World War II before settling into a four-decade career of firing and running every type of engine on the Indiana Division. What was his favorite? Hard to say, but it was difficult to beat a freshly shopped Hudson. Speed? Bud had received but one demerit for speed violation over his career, on a memorable day when he gave Niagara 6008 (“the Sixty and Eight,” as he called it) free rein with a late train, rushing across Indiana at 90-plus mph. “She wanted to run,” he reasoned, “and I let her.” Least favorite engines? No question: the babyfaced Baldwin cab units that could never be counted upon to make the schedule. “Junk the day they bought ’em,” the veteran hogger declared. Current events? Bud was scornful of the entire Penn Central “scheme,” as he called it, hopeful but pragmatic about the prospects for Amtrak.
Our conversation drifted back to Bud’s earliest months on the railroad as a rookie fireman in 1941, soon after his graduation from Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis. I asked if he had known Chelsea Stewart, producer of the Tech Sketchbook student variety show. “Did I know him? He was my favorite teacher!”
I smiled and mentioned that he was also my father. Bud’s head snapped toward me, his expression a blend of surprise and satisfaction. “You’re Doc Stewart’s son? Well, I’ll be . . .” The cab fell silent for a moment as he turned his attention to the approaching home signal for the interlocking at Sheff, cornfield junction with the former NYC Chicago– Cairo “Egyptian line.” Bud acknowledged two up-and-down flashes of the tower operator’s lantern with two crisp blasts on the horn and closed the throttle for our passage over the diamond.
And then he stood up.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s see what Doc Stewart’s boy can do with this thing.”
I didn’t need a second invitation. Sliding into the warm seat, reviewing the gauges, and looking down the track, I felt both excitedly aware of the rare opportunity I had just been given and yet completely at ease. “Give her a few notches, one at a time,” Bud called out. The generator whined behind the wall separating the cab from the engine room and the speedometer began jiggling to the right as the 1439 responded to my commands.
Ahead, the lights of another small town twinkled in the winter darkness. “Some crossings coming up at Earl Park.” The 1439’s five-chime horn sounded louder and better than before when I pulled the rope swaying above the throttrain
tle stand. Now the journey, almost sleepinducing moments before, had become a life-altering adventure, one requiring studied concentration on the tasks at hand while simultaneously creating a thrilling experience unknown to most inhabitants of our planet. Soon we were paralleling four-lane U.S. 52 through the town of Fowler, and suddenly there seemed to be more lights, buildings, cars, trucks, and other distractions than at any other time during the trip. I leaned forward in the seat and peered intently ahead, keeping the horn cord close at hand.
After another 10 miles of bouncing along the PC main, we slowed for the junction with the TA Double at Templeton. The figure of a block-station operator appeared in the distance, lifting a loaded train order hoop as we approached. While the 1439 rocked through the curve, Bud opened the side door behind me and leaned into the brisk evening air to snag the orders. “Open your window and wave to this guy,” he said. As we rolled by, I returned the curious glance of the operator with a respectful nod; his expression mimicked those of the PC and IC enginemen I had met over the course of this escapade. “Who’s he? Never saw him before.” Never would again, either.
The 1439, still carrying her racehorse spirit within, responded eagerly as I again followed Bud’s directives, taking one throttle notch after another atop the smooth, ex-NKP trackage. I watched with satisfaction as the speedometer needle wiggled past 70. As each lonely road crossing came into view, I began pulling back on the horn cord with vigor, creating long, loud salutes to the memory of enginemen who had passed this way before.
Approaching an old wooden countryroad overpass, Bud shouted in my ear, “Blow a highball as you go under the bridge, then wave.” As the nose of the 1439 shot under the bridge, the headlight picked up a woman just beyond the right of way, restraining a dog on a leash with one hand and offering a friendly wave with the other. “She’s there every night,” Bud reported.
We raced on through the night with a sense that we were confidently riding a high-quality stretch of main line that would never end — and yet the seemingly interminable segment between Templeton and the beginning of the descent to the Wabash River was only 17 miles long. As its end approached, I yielded my seat so Bud could set up the air for the curving ride down the hill to Lafayette.
In one of those incongruous moments that occur only occasionally in life, I realized that I had just operated my favorite passenger train at sustained high speed on the main line — but in another railroad’s locomotive, on another railroad’s track, almost four years after the NYC had succumbed in an unsuccessful merger and eight months after the train’s pedigree had been transferred to a quasi-government operating agency.
Still — what an experience!
Later, Jay had his turn at the throttle between Altamont and the moment our fireman called out “Middle yellah!” for the red-over-yellow-over-red approach signal at the ramp to the former PRR I&F line. Dick subsequently enjoyed the pleasures of the engineer’s seat on that “new way” routing between Lebanon and Davis. All too soon the late-evening lights of Indianapolis came into view through the 1439’s curved windshields.
After we had descended from the cab at Union Station, thanked Bud for a oncein-a-lifetime experience, and watched the George Washington accelerate into the cold night, Dick effectively summarized the personal effect of our overnight odyssey. “Well,” he reflected, “I can die now!”
A MYSTICAL WORLD
Over a period of about seven hours in two locomotive cabs, aboard what were purported to be “new” trains, we had experienced firsthand a mystical world of traditional railroading, its longstanding parts and processes being skewed by contemporary political pressures, technological changes, and marketplace shifts.
While the Chicago–Indianapolis–Cincinnati route appeared to be a likely corridor for continued passenger service, much of the trackage needed to sustain it now carried only a fraction of its pre-PC freight volume. By 1973 portions of the increasingly ill-maintained line were under slow
orders as restrictive as 10 mph, and the two Amtrak trains were moved to other routes. Most of the former NYC “old way” trackage between Indianapolis and Lafayette was incrementally abandoned between 1976 and ’85.
As Amtrak began acquiring new equipment, the E units and cars from our 1972 New Year’s Day consists also disappeared. Ex-B&O 1439, renumbered Amtrak 200 and repainted with a “bloody nose” red, platinum mist, and black paint job not long after our journey, was nevertheless retired on May 28, 1975. Concurrently, the aging streamliner-era cars began appearing on Amtrak’s equipment disposition lists.
Today, the Kankakee, Beaverville & Southern short line still operates the former Riley route west from Lafayette, but one of the two main tracks, the signals, the board-and-batten NKP stations, the old wooden overpass (plus the waving woman and her dog), the brick operator’s cabin at Templeton, and the high-speed, mainline flavor of the erstwhile TA Double are all gone. The KB&S also retained the ex-NYC trackage from Templeton to Kankakee, but the tower at Sheff was demolished years ago. So, too, was the onceelegant Hotel Kankakee. Bud McMahon, the gracious gentleman responsible for the adventure described here, passed way in 2008 at age 85.
When the 1439 accelerated away from Templeton and made transition that longago evening, it was carrying its occupants through a storybook tale, one that blended railroading past and present with a strong hint of evolutionary events soon to occur. In effect, the early years of Amtrak were not a distinct introduction of the future but a temporary restraining order for the past, keeping some of the old equipment and a few of the old ways alive just a while longer. On that New Year’s Day, Bud McMahon’s three guests were to experience transitions of their own, each gaining an enhanced appreciation of many of railroading’s fleeting dimensions and traditions and a better understanding of the inevitability of change.
Thanks, Bud. Thanks for the memories — and the education.
WILLIAM BENNING STEWART grew up in Indianapolis and made many journeys on the Riley with his parents in the 1950s and ’60s. Balancing a 30-year corporate communications career with avocational writing in transportation history, he has had bylines in numerous publications. This is his fifth article in Classic Trains.