Eastern Railroad Discussion > South End of old Monon to Made into a Rail Trail

The following information was in the February 2023 Issue of Chapter Chatter published by Louisville Chapter NRHS:

Indiana Governor Eric J. Holcomb announced on January 10 in his 2023 State of the State address that the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) will award $29.5 million to acquire and begin development of the 62.3-mile Monon South Trail spanning five counties in Southern Indiana. Once fully constructed, the trail will be the longest contiguous recreational trail in Indiana.
The Monon South Trail will follow the route of the historic Monon Railroad beginning in New Albany and running through the communities of Borden, New Pekin, Salem, Campbellsburg, Saltillo, Orleans and Mitchell. This route includes portions of Floyd, Clark, Washington, Orange and Lawrence counties.
CSXT, a successor to the Monon Railroad, last operated trains on this section of the line in 2008 and abandoned the rail line in 2018.

 

As much as it saddens me, there really is no other better option.  The line basically goes from nowhere to nowhere, has been a tough piece of railroad since the day it was built, there are basically ZERO customers, very little population, and no need to route through traffic that way. This line has been a dead man walking since the Monon-L&N merger in 1971. Without the MILW/Soo/CP trackage rights, it probably wouldn't have lasted as long as it did. Even INRD couldn't make any reasonable use out of it. In this case, a trail is probably the best thing that could happen to it.

Agreed on the above.  Here's a shot I took of one of the Indiana Rail Road trackage rights trains just a couple of weeks before those ended.  The train is passing Salem, IN and shows what the traffic had dwindled to in the final days.  

Mike Derrick

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So while a "nowhere to nowhere" rail line fails, a similar $29M trail will succeed?

Out 

callum_out Wrote:
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> So while a "nowhere to nowhere" rail line fails, a
> similar $29M trail will succeed?

I can envision a second phase running from Mitchell to Bloomington. Suddenly, it's no longer nowhere-to-nowhere, it becomes college town (Bloomington) to outskirts of significant city (Louisville). And even without such a second phase, its south end is close enough to Louisville that it ought to draw cyclists from all over that metro area.

I think that the adjacent property owners north of Bedford were already successful in having the abandoned right-of-way reverted back to them.  

inrdjlg Wrote:
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> I think that the adjacent property owners north of
> Bedford were already successful in having the
> abandoned right-of-way reverted back to them.

OK, so much for a MItchell-Bloomington leg. That's too bad.
 

Yeah I'm happy that they are going to do something with it. I'm just glad I made several trips up that way between 2000 and 2009 when with CSX, CP, SOO and INRD were polishing the rails. 
I crossed over the south end just last week to see trees and brush growing everywhere. Here is an image of one of my many chases that I took in its last year of operation. A CSX GP30slug leads a northbound by the semaphores at Leipsic Indiana on January 22,2009. 

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Hope I get a chance to ride it before I get too old.

Posted from Android

>>>>>So while a "nowhere to nowhere" rail line fails, a similar $29M trail will succeed?

Some of those "nowhere to nowhere" segments wind up really contributing to local economies.  White Top to Abington comes to mind.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/23 18:00 by SpeederDriver.

Hey if it does some good more power to the project but I've seen a lot of trail money that
recouped zero and was lightly used.

Out 

If the line is so worthless, how did the Monon make it work?  Seems like a good line for bypass freights that want to avoid congestion.

The Monon used it because it was all they had, they would have loved to restructure and reroute the line, but never had the money. The overwhelming majority of the traffic south of the Bedford stone quarries was bridge traffic to and from Louisville that easily could have been routed elsewhere, but keep in mind that until the depression and bankruptcy, the Southern and L&N had a financial interest in the Monon. The south end was a total pain to operate from a grade and curvature standpoint, and whatever could be gained by bypassing Indianapolis was eaten up by operating limitations down there. Even INRD decided it made more sense to turn Louisville traffic over to the L&I at Indy and let THEM haul it instead if doing it themselves via Bedford.  Also keep in mind that the Monon operated in a regulated enviroment, and many things were done then that make little sense under the sunlight of of an unregulated enviroment. 

Posted from iPhone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/23 04:51 by junctiontower.

coach Wrote:
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> Seems like a good line for bypass freights that want to avoid congestion.

The railroad industry in general has not cared about this for decades, and Precision Scheduled Railroading cares even less. They'd rather drive off the low-margin business to reduce congestion, than maintain the capital resources needed to support it.

The Monon did manage to relocate a small segment of its main line from near Harrodsburg to Clear Creek.  The original main that ran via Smithville and Sanders was downgraded and eventually abandoned.  

toledopatch Wrote:
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> coach Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Seems like a good line for bypass freights that
> want to avoid congestion.
>
> The railroad industry in general has not cared
> about this for decades, and Precision Scheduled
> Railroading cares even less. They'd rather drive
> off the low-margin business to reduce congestion,
> than maintain the capital resources needed to
> support it.

And North-south bypass routes seem to fair even worse than east west routes. If the industry truly wanted bypasses and more direct routes, the original Kankakee Belt and the C&O of Indiana would still exist.

Posted from iPhone

inrdjlg Wrote:
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> The Monon did manage to relocate a small segment
> of its main line from near Harrodsburg to Clear
> Creek.  The original main that ran via Smithville
> and Sanders was downgraded and eventually
> abandoned.  

That WAS a huge improvement for the Monon, but they needed several more alignment changes and the ONLY other one the route ever got was bypass around Cedar Lake IN. Besides terrain and curvature issues, being built so early, the Monon tended to go smack dab through the very center of the towns they served, usually in the streets.

Posted from iPhone

The dominant transport modality in a highly regulated environment made it work, or at least allowed it to bounce in and out of solvency. IIRC Barriger himself was of the opinion investing south of Ladoga didn't cost out.

CSX bought an easement and pulled the L&I up from the fines for less than rehabbing the Monon's southern end. That ex-PRR line has a significantly better operating profile and costs.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/23 17:52 by PCRC.

As much as he probably hated to admit it, Barriger knew the dollars and cents of railroading better than most and he knw full well the Monon could never generate enough revenue to finance the REAL improvements the railroad needed, particularily the south end and at Lafayette. I think the Monon's peak earning years in the 50's was still only netting something like 5-6 million dollars a year. Barriger, Brown and those that followed could run a sharp little railroad on those dollars for the time, but you weren't going to actually turn it into a Super Railroad.  It also didn't help that despite some solid gains, the road's tradional top two traffic sources, Indiana mined coal and limestone were on the decline in a serious way.  The ONLY possible salvation for the Monon as a through route I could ever see was if the Southern had bought it for their Chicago gateway and then did a Rat Hole type modernization program on the line.  As I said, once the L&N bought it, the Monon was just a dead man walking, although it managed to stumble on for decades. 

This is the route Amtrak's Floridian used until its demise in 1979, right?