Run-through depots

[Tim T Swan]

A previous discussion on the old MONON Listserve dealt with listing the towns in which the MONON or its predecessors had run-through depots.  A by-no-means-final consensus appeared in the May The Hoosier Line uder Q&A  Question #473.  The list included Bedford, Bloomington, Gosport, Michigan City, New Albany, and Orleans.

Here's another one--Crawfordsville.  Like Bloomington, there is no known photographic evidence, but a 19th-century map (scan attached) clearly indicates a run-through depot there.  If so, it's probably the structure that we knew as the old brick freighthouse (scan also attached, the 2-tone brick building on the right) that once stood next to the later, still-standing passenger depot.  Thoughts, anybody?

[Robert Wheeler]

Tim and all
I recall seeing a drawing in the Greencastle drawer at WHQ showing the foot print of the runthru depot at Greencastle. There were no drawings of the depot, however.

[Victor Sauerheber]

Thanks Tim, But what does that say Below the Turn table ? Rate Hse?










rate ahy up there by the Turn table ?

[Ron Marquardt]

Victor, it says depot and freight house. All the run through depots were combination depots and freight houses.  That was their purpose.  Tim, I don't think the brick freight house was the old run through.  First of all, it had a hipped roof, and none of the others had a hipped roof.  Secondly, I can't locate it right now, but I think I saw in the Annual Report Summary CD about a reference to building a "new" Crawfordsville freight house, sometime around the turn of the century.

[Tim T Swan]

Victor, it looks like "Turn Table Round Hse" to me.  See attached blow-up.

[Tim T Swan]

You may be right, Ron.  That hipped roof wouldn't make any sense on a run-through structure.

[Tim T Swan]

Okay, Bob.  Maybe we should add Greencastle to the list.

[John Butler]

As I mentioned in the first discussion on the old list-serve it is also probable that Francesville had a run-through depot.  This is reproted in the Keith Greasby disk of newspaper articles.  Notice the last paragraph.  That is proof enough for me.

SPECIAL 1938 EXCERPT REGARDING 1874 GREELY ARTICLE ABOVE
 
  From Logansport Press - June 30, 1938
  Greeley, Follies, Share Francesville History (Excerpt)

              The branch of the C.I.O railroad which runs
  through here was completed between 1850 and 1853.  James
  Brooks, of New Albany, in 1853 president of the New Albany
  and Salem railroad laid out the town and named it for his
  daughter, Frances, in 1853.  He purchased the land from
  William Rees.   

              Horace Greeley, editor of the old New York
  Tribune in 1853, was making a lecture tour through Indiana.
  He had spoken to Lafayette and was to go to LaPorte for his
  next engagement, but he missed the train.  He started
  northward on a freight.  The locomotive broke down, and
  Greeley had to spend the night in Brookston.  The next
  morning he hired two section men to take him to Westville on
  a hand car. It was that journey which inspired Greeley to
  write “A Wild Night On The Prairie.”

              This line of railroad was selected as the route
  over which the Lincoln Funeral train was to pass.  Citizens
  who gathered beside the track saw the casket through the
  glass sides of the coach while the train stopped, just after
  daybreak, to take on wood and water.

              The first depot covered more than twice as much
  space as the present one and the sidetrack passed through
  it.  It was long enough to shelter 4 box cars at one time.
  Provisions were stored here and hauled overland to
  Rensselaer and other towns with no rail connections.  In
  1871 there were three northbound expresses, three southbound
  expresses and two freights each way through the town daily.

[Ron Marquardt]

Good find John.  I had forgotten about that article.  / Ron