All images © 2008 by Robert E. Pence
The Nickel Plate (Formally New York Chicago & St Louis) Railroad ran between Chicago and Buffalo and began serving Fort Wayne in 1882, following the former alignment of the Wabash-Erie Canal through town. For years the Nickel Plate traffic along the north edge of downtown cut off growth to the North and created traffic congestion. In 1947 the city signed an agreement with the Nickel Plate to elevate the tracks across seven downtown intersections, with the city and county splitting eighty percent of the cost and the railroad picking up the remaining twenty percent.
The elevation was completed and opened for traffic in 1955, with NKP Berkshire steam locomotive 767 pulling the first train across. The new station connected to the old wood gothic passenger station with a modern glazed-block passage and escalators to track level. The Nickel Plate was merged into the Norfolk and Western, later Norfolk Southern, System in 1964, and passenger service ended in 1965. The old wood gothic passenger station burned just a few years later; fire officials determined that the fire was probably started by vagrants who built a fire inside to keep warm. This night photo, looking south on Calhoun Street in Fort Wayne, shows the elevation at the location of the former passenger station. Note the enclosed stairway on the east (left) side of Calhoun Street, going up to track level; it gave access to the Cleveland set-out sleeper that ran on trains 5 and 6.
The Nickel Plate's premier train, popular with business travelers, was the Nickel Plate Limited, Train Nos. 5 and 6, renamed City of Chicago and City of Cleveland in its later years. It was an overnight train, and the set-out sleeper was an amenity that contributed to its popularity. Here's how that worked:
Eastbound Number 6 departed Fort Wayne at 2:03a.m., an hour rivaled for inconvenience only by Amtrak's current hours of service at many midwestern cities. To serve business travelers going to Cleveland, the railroad parked a sleeping car on a siding at the top of that stairway and connected it to station power and steam heat. The sleeping car attendant was ready to help passengers get settled in any time after 9:00p.m. When the train arrived from Chicago, it coupled onto the set-out sleeper. The train arrived in Cleveland at 7:00a.m., good timing for anyone traveling on business.
Westbound Number 5 departed Cleveland at 10:55p.m.. Fort Wayne-bound passengers could board their sleeping car at Cleveland's Union Terminal starting at 9:00p.m., and the westbound train picked up the car and carried it to Fort Wayne, arriving at 2:20a.m.. At Fort Wayne, the sleeper was uncoupled and parked on the set-out sleeper siding. Passengers could continue to occupy it until 8:00 a.m.
I hadn't yet come to an appreciation of passenger trains while the Nickel Plate still ran them (bad experience on the PRR in 1964), and the NKP passenger service ended while I was away from home in the USAF, so I never got to see regular passenger service at this station. Until 1994, though, Norfolk Southern ran a steam program. Thanks to that, I had the opportunity to see steam passenger trains on the Fort Wayne elevation on several occasions and even board one there. Here are some photos.
Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia built 2-8-2 4501 in 1911 for freight service on the Southern. After it had run out its useful life on Southern, it was sold, restored, returned to Southern for excursion service for several years and is now on display at the Tennessee Railway Museum at Chattanooga.
In 1974 4501 brought an Independence Limited excursion train through Fort Wayne. The train stopped here overnight and the locomotive was serviced at Norfolk & Western's East Wayne Yards at New Haven. Passengers detrained at the downtown passenger platform, and those who were to continue on with the train stayed overnight in a hotel.
The next morning the train backed down to the passenger station to reboard passengers before continuing eastward.
Approaching Sherman Street
Many steam excursions feature a photo run-by. The train stops and passengers wanting to take pictures are allowed to detrain. The engineer backs up the train some distance, and then runs past, often with as much smoke and noise as possible.
Waiting for a freight train to pass before backing the excursion train up the wye.
The yellow hose is bringing water to refill the tender. 765's tender holds more than 20,000 gallons. Locomotives in excursion service usually use a second tender or auxiliary water tank to avoid having to refill frequently; 765 acquired one after these trips. Local fire departments often help out with water, hooking up a nearby fire hydrant and sometimes bringing a pumper to speed up the flow.
Preparing to depart. The copious clouds of sooty black smoke happen when fresh coal is added to the firebox, as oils and other organic matter burn off. A skilled fireman who is familiar with his locomotive and route can minimize smoke in towns and residential areas by anticipating the need for coal and firing accordingly.
Big locomotives like 765 use steam-powered stokers to feed coal from the tender to the firebox when running on the road, but must be hand-fired when standing still because the lubrication for the stoker engine is driven by the motion of the driver rods.
765's tender holds more than 20 tons of coal, usually enough for 100 to 150 miles depending on the weight of the train, speed and nature of the terrain. A big locomotive working hard can consume a ton of coal every five or ten minutes, clearly beyond most firemen's shoveling ability.
Back in Fort Wayne
Best Friend and its coaches being unloaded from the special railroad cars they travel in, on the siding behind Fort Wayne Newspapers.
Before the public rides, the volunteers got their own ride.
The event started after the festival's opening parade. Here, the crew and volunteers watch the last of the parade come down Calhoun Street.
People were lined up waiting, and after we opened the doors, we were way too busy to for pictures. We packed 'em in all afternoon. The folks who hurried to get a seat at the front learned something about steam locomotive behavior, especially if they were wearing light-colored nice clothes.
The ability to turn a locomotive or an entire train in Fort Wayne, plus the fact that Fort Wayne is an ideal distance from both Detroit and Chicago for day excursions, made this a popular destination for trips from those two cities in the 1980s. Summers usually saw visits on at least two weekends, and occasionally excursion equipment passed through en route to other venues. What follows is a collection of photographs of various visits by N&W 611 on trips sponsored by Chicago's Twentieth Century Railroad Club and the Bluewater Michigan Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.
Turnaround moves involved using the tracks that used to run past the west side of Swinney Park and continuing on the Muncie Line between the former Nickel Plate by the site of the Wayne Knitting Mills and the former Wabash at Hugo, near the airport. The tracks shown in the next two photos had been recently reconstructed at the time of the photos, but no longer exist.
