Gary: Clarke Yard and a Lot More
THE FORT WAYNE BRANCH ORIGIN
In 1856, three railroads considered joining forces: the Ohio & Indiana Railroad, the Ohio & Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad. According to the Bucyrus Journal, the boards of directors from each company first met on May 6 to discuss merging into the Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne & Chicago Railroad Company. After voting to allow the merger, shareholders from each railroad gathered in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on June 26 to vote on the agreement. The vote passed, and the Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne & Chicago Railroad Company (PFW&C) was born.
The PFW&C was basically three railroads rolled into one. Back in 1849, the Ohio & Pennsylvania built a line from Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, to Crestline, Ohio. At Crestline, it connected with the Ohio & Indiana Railroad, which stretched from Crestline to Fort Wayne, Indiana, by 1851. Then, the Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad finished the line from Fort Wayne to Chicago in February 1856. The final section, from Fort Wayne to Columbia City, Indiana, helped bring all three roads together under the PFW&C name. Around this time, the company started building west from Fort Wayne toward Chicago.
Skipping over a lot of technical history (including a bankruptcy that changed the name from ‘Railroad’ to ‘Rail Way’), the PFW&C was eventually leased by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which took over operations in 1871.
With the formation of the PFW&C clarified, it’s important to understand how its original purpose shaped its impact. Initially pitched as “the shortest and quickest route to Chicago and the North West…via Cleveland,” the line genuinely shortened the journey by 100 miles, bypassing Indianapolis. Rather than covering the railroad’s entire history, this overview focuses on its beginnings to set the stage for more local developments.
PFW&C AND CHICAGO
The Chicago terminal at West 12th and Canal was already up and running by 1858. Still, the line west of Fort Wayne — through places like Plymouth, Indiana — was under construction and hadn’t reached Chicago yet. Shareholders were understandably nervous about losing money since it looked like the project wouldn’t finish on time. There wasn’t a crew building east from Chicago, either. The line finally reached Englewood, Illinois, in November 1858, with the Pennsylvania Railroad leasing the PFW&C and beginning service to what would become Chicago Union Station (opened 1881) in January 1859.
The Great Chicago Fire hit in October 1871 and burned down the PFW&C’s depots, along with millions of dollars’ worth of lumber, coal, and other goods. According to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, PFW&C’s Indiana employees contributed money to help with rebuilding it. Fast-forward to 1906, and PFW&C employees between Clarke Junction and Crestline donated money, food, and supplies to help San Francisco after the big earthquake. Lake Shore and Michigan Southern even helped by offering to ship any donated supplies for free.
Back in 1871, PRR passenger trains left Chicago for Pittsburgh at 5:50 a.m., with no stops in the Region until they reached Plymouth four hours later. It took almost a whole day to get to Pittsburgh. According to an ad in the Freeport Bulletin, PFW&C used Pullman Palace Cars on the express trains.
CLARKE JUNCTION, NORTHEAST CLARKE, CLARKE YARD/EJ&E
Clarke Junction was always a highly important interlocking (a system to control train movements at railroad crossings or junctions) from its inception. It is where PFW&C interchanged with the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway (EJ&E), and where the Wabash Railroad would access the Chicago Terminal Transfer Railroad, which terminated near Clarke Junction.
Clarke Junction had a traffic tower early on. Various tracks were laid out and removed as needed, to the point where the area was spaghettified with rails. By 1899, Clarke Interlocking Tower had a telegraph, and PFW&C operated a telegraph service, installing lines along its route between Crestline, OH, and Clarke Junction. The fast-growing demand outpaced staffing. In 1899, a third division was established, adding a third line between Shelby, IN, and Clarke Junction.
In 1895, the Chicago, Lake Shore, and Eastern Railway was incorporated. It was later merged with the famed EJ&E Railway. For our purposes, we will use ‘EJ&E’. EJ&E had plans to go to Indianapolis then. However, according to the Chicago Tribune, it was still in talks with PFW&C to reach Clarke Junction, on the outskirts of what would later be Gary, IN, and beyond. For the moment, it had a firm footing at the Illinois Steel plant known to us as South Chicago Works. EJ&E was scrambling to expand to fend off takeover attempts by the Illinois Central Railroad and the mysterious, unknown entity known then as the “Calumet and Blue Island railroad,” which I suspect was the precursor (or placeholder) to the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad.
To help facilitate railroad function at South Chicago Works, EJ&E bought 130 acres of land at Clarke Junction. It planned to build a yard adjacent to the PFW&C right-of-way, 3 miles long with 26 tracks. It also had plans to move its locomotive shops to Clarke Junction. This was printed in the Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1895, Page 1. EJ&E had no way to see that just ten years later, Gary Works and Kirk Yard would save it from all takeover attempts for the next hundred years.
Down the tracks, to the southeast, was the fledgling town of Clark Station. It was the location of a water plug, where watering track pans were present by 1899. I could not find when they were installed. Some locomotives used a scoop in the water tender to refill. Others had to stop and use a spout that brought water to the tender from above. All of the water came from the Grand Calumet River.
It is unknown exactly when EJ&E built Clarke Yard, or whether it existed in 1899. It is also unknown as of now when PFW&C/PRR obtained control of the yard. The earliest known instance of Clarke Yard I found was in 1909, when the NWI Times reported that A. Wagner was promoted from switchman to yardmaster at Clarke Station. There’s only one yard near Clarke Station…
PINE/WABASH
In 1910, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad inked an agreement with PFW&C to run its B&O passenger trains on the PRR Ft. Wayne line. It would access the railroad it bought, the Chicago Terminal Transfer Railroad, via Clarke Junction. Their line would be known as the B&OCTT, or B&OCT, for decades. Today, it is part of the CSX Barr Subdivision through East Chicago, IN, and Hammond, IN. To reach Clarke Junction, a 1/4-mile section of track was built from its old right-of-way to a point known as Nero, which also had a tower.
According to Bob Lalich and the Industrial Scenery blog, the telegraph code for the tower was ‘NE’. I already knew that, I just wanted a source to cite. When Conrail obtained ownership of the tower, it was known as ‘NEro’. They say Conrail named the tower Nero. Before that, from context clues, the tower was named after the closest junction, Pine. So, Pine Tower, with the code ’NE’. Why those particular letters? I don’t know. NE is commonly thought of as ‘northeast’. What would Nero be northeast of? Technically, it is northeast of Clarke Junction and the B&OCT. I might be reading too deep into it.
The earliest I could find a mention of a Pine Tower was in December 1910, in an article that detailed the deaths of three railroad employees laying track there. They moved out of the way of one LS&MS train and were struck by another from the opposite direction. The chief maintainer was the brother of one of the dead, and he was present when the bodies were found. Their bodies were taken inside the Pine tower. So, it lends credence to the idea that, before it was known as Nero, it was known as Pine Tower, or the tower at Pine.
In 1915, an Indiana Harbor man named John Krajacic killed his wife. He then walked to Pine Tower and confessed his crime to the towerman, G. B. Schmetzer, before boarding a freight train bound for Gary.
B&O/NERO
B&O wanted to reroute the line for years prior because it was too long. Using the CTT would shave 25 minutes off the travel time. However, its hand was forced to purchase the CTT at that time because its right-of-way through Gary was being dismantled and reallocated to facilitate the construction of Indiana Steel, now known as Gary Works. The old route was used for both passenger and freight operations. Yet with the new reroute, passenger operations to Chicago via the old right-of-way were no longer possible. The remnants of the old right-of-way could still be used for freight, but passengers had to reach downtown Chicago another way. I won’t get into the particulars of it in this write-up.
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Wabash Railway had track rights on the CTT, which it retained when B&O purchased CTT. Wabash used the B&OCT to reach Chicago and had a shared depot with PFW&C in East Chicago.
In 1910, new direct-current automatic block signals were installed between Clarke Junction and Ft. Wayne. In 1912, Wabash Railway double-tracked in Gary from Clarke Junction to Downtown Gary, including 14 miles of new siding tracks.
The above photo came from an old abandonment docket. It is of terrible quality. However, I color-coded it to make it easier to understand. The red/burgundy line running left to right is the PFW&C/PRR. The green line to the left is the B&OCT. The blue line above the red one is the Wabash 4th District. All of these lines intersect at Clarke Junction. The red diagonal line at the right is North Clark Road, which points due north.
MAJOR CHANGES AT SOUTHEAST CLARKE
The above image shows southeast Clarke. Clark Road runs straight through it (red diagonal line). There was an interlocking tower at the actual Clarke Junction, about two miles northeast. However, did you know there was a little-known second tower on the south bank of the Grand Calumet River? The setup at Southeast Clarke, pre-1920s, was as such.
The photo above was taken in Gary, IN, and from the IUN US Steel photo archive. Ignoring the smaller red arrows, the Clarke Station interlocking tower is singled out with the large, red arrow. It sits at the far right of the picture above, on the south bank of the Grand Calumet River. The other bridge behind the first, at the center-foreground, belonged to the Wabash Railroad’s 4th District.
The above image shows the location of this southeast tower. It sat on the southeast bank of the Grand Calumet River, just north of the I-90 toll road.
The second, sepia image shows what one would see from the above tower, a manually operated structure, looking northwest up the PFW&C/PRR. You can see interlocking piping traversing through the spaces underneath the bridge. The arrows point to turnouts and leads that allowed trains to switch tracks and enter the southeast side of Clarke Yard. At this time, the yard leads were immediately northwest of the shown bridge. They were moved 350 to 400 yards northwest of where they originally sat, away from the shown bridge. The tower and interlocking piping were uninstalled.
The above Google Earth image shows a crew representation of the original setup of Clarke Yard’s southeast entrance. The yard entrance was on the east side of the blue arrow. These were moved further northwest, closer to Clark Road, in the 1920s. The red arrows depict the railroad path to the Clark Station stockyards and animal barns. The yellow lines to the far left represent the Wabash 4th District, which connects to Clarke Junction to the northwest. Finally, on the left is the footprint of what used to be the small village of Clark Station itself.
The above image shows an actual map of Southeast Clarke Yard. It’s not very detailed, nor is it terribly accurate. However, this shows Clarke Yard. There is little to nothing available about PFW&C/PRR operations at Southeast Clark Station. I am assuming that this tower was responsible for operating the southeast entrance to Clarke Yard and governed everything immediately around the village of Clark Station, including the stockyards. This also assumes that the tower was no longer needed once remote operations were implemented at the Clarke Junction tower.
The above photo shows the Clark Station area from 1938. The numbers and arrows depict landmarks in the image. Water plug/water tank.
- Clark Station stockyard tracks.
- PFW&C/PRR Grand Calumet River Bridge (steel by 1938).
- Relocated southeast Clarke Yard entrance leads.
- Wabash 4th District Right-of-Way
- North Clark Road
Some things present in previous photos no longer exist by 1938. The wooden bridge over the Grand Calumet River has been replaced with steel bridges. The southeast tower is gone. The original yard leads are relocated. It is not known if the track pans are still here, but they probably are since the water tank is still there. Finally, the stockyard barns are gone. The stockyard tracks are still in use, but they probably aren’t holding livestock, but garbage and/or refuse food by 1938. Clark Station residents constantly complained to Gary officials about the smell of rotting food, especially in the summer.
THE SPEED DEMONS
Meanwhile, in 1895, PFW&C was speeding again. An account was written in the Monroeville Breeze by an unnamed individual.
“Some days ago, attention was attracted to a fast run made by a special train carrying the General Manager (PFW&C) and other officers of the Pennsylvania Lines from Chicago over the Fort Wayne Route. The official time shows a high speed was achieved, although no special effort or preparation had been made to establish a record. The trip was not for that purpose, but it demonstrated that Pennsylvania can easily [s]et the pace when it comes to fast running.
It was exactly 9:51 am when Engineer [William] Heliker took his position in the cab of engine №271 in Chicago Union Station. Municipal regulations require slow running within the city limits, and the train moved slowly for quite a distance. An open bridge on the Calumet River caused a four-minute delay, and the best part of an hour had passed before fast ground was reached. At Clarke Junction, a lively gait was struck, the distance of over eight miles between that point and Liverpool being covered in eight minutes. A crossing stop at Wanatah caused more delay, but the stretch of over six miles from that station to Hanna was passed in five minutes.
The distance of over fourteen miles between Hamlet and Plymouth was run in exactly fourteen minutes. Another crossing stop at Warsaw took up more time, and it was thirty-five minutes after twelve noon when the train came to a standstill at Fort Wayne, having made the 148-mile run from Chicago in two hours and forty-four minutes, about fifty-four miles an hour, including delays, making the actual running time a mile a minute or better, the entire distance.”
He continues the trip to Crestline, which was also done at a great pace.
In 1897, another test train ran over the PFW&C line from Pittsburgh to Chicago. This train made the trip in just 10 hours. The return trip took 9 hours. The eastbound trip broke previous records. During this run, the fastest jaunt was again between Clarke Junction and Liverpool, which took seven minutes, one minute shorter than the previous account. It was seven minutes between Wheeler and Valparaiso. The engineer on this run was Edward McDonald.
Two years later, PFW&C broke speed records again. A limited passenger train was nearly two hours late leaving Fort Wayne, but arrived at Chicago forty minutes late. Engineer Byron Holmes (№278) made up an hour. Again, Clarke Junction was in the mix. Holmes made it from Valparaiso to Clarke Junction at 80 MPH. Other passenger railroads had reached this speed, yet no other road could maintain it for nearly 22 straight miles. It broke a second record between Clarke Junction and Colehour, even with a water stop at Clarke Junction. Three years later, Engine №278 was still remembered in the press for its Valpo to Clarke Junction run.
In 1900, the №7, a PFW&C mail train, ran the route between Ft. Wayne and Clarke Junction, a distance of 128 miles, in 129 minutes. Later that year, №21, an hour late from Ft. Wayne, ran the same route in 148 minutes, including four stops. The next year, in 1901, a passenger train went 131 miles in two hours and 20 minutes between Crestline and Fort Wayne.
In June of 1905, just before the announcement of the City of Gary, PFW&C sent a special experimental train to Chicago. Its function was to break a speed record. It traveled from Pittsburgh to Chicago in 18 hours. It didn’t break the record due to weather-related conditions, but, for the time, it was mighty fast. The goal was to make it from New York City to Chicago in the same time. The special New York-to-Chicago train ran that June and made it in 15 hours and 51 minutes. Due to a hot-box issue near Harrisburg, PA, the train was delayed by nearly 3 hours. So, theoretically, it could have made it in 12 hours.
That same month, the actual New York to Chicago train arrived in Chicago in 18 hours, three minutes ahead of schedule. The eastbound Chicago-to-New York train arrived two hours earlier, at 16 hours. It set a record as the world’s fastest train for distance traveled. A second Chicago to New York train arrived in exactly 18 hours, running between Atwood, IN, and Warsaw, IN, at 100 MPH.
Later that month, Engineer Jeffery McCarthy broke all the speed records. According to the Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel, his New York-to-Chicago “Pennsylvania Special” made its first trip with Engine №7002, an Atlantic, Class E-2. The trip from New York to Crestline was done with another locomotive. That loco had a hot-box issue and had to be swapped out for №7002, which caused it to be late. Once it entered the PFW&C Western Division, it was 25 minutes behind. He received instructions from the company to make up for all the time as much as possible. That’s what Jeff did.
He made 131 miles in 115 minutes, arriving in Ft Wayne eight minutes early. He broke speed records in Elida, OH, where he covered three miles in 85 seconds — that’s a speed of 127 MPH if you calculate it straight! Another tidbit, the president of the Erie Lackawanna was on board. He was just a passenger and had no idea what would happen. Engineer McCarthy and his crew were relieved at Ft Wayne, where another engineer continued the trip to Chicago, arriving exactly on time. The entire story is told in the Sentinel, June 14, 1905, Page 3.
Yet another train broke the record for longest distance traveled at 75 MPH over 257 miles between Crestline, OH, and Clarke Junction. There were numerous instances of PFW&C trains flying down the line, yet not always breaking records. Thirty minutes late, forty-five minutes late, etc, and arriving at their stations on time or early. The company allowed this, which gave PFW&C and PRR the reputation for speed, efficiency, and quality. The stretch between Ft Wayne and Clarke Junction was the hot spot, mostly used to make up time.
THE VALPO DUMMY ORIGIN
In 1900, a new service began on the PFW&C. According to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, a few local services on the PRR Fort Wayne line began on Monday, August 20, 1900. They were born of previously forced schedule runs, in which a local train ran once a day in each direction between local towns. The runs were between Valparaiso, IN, and Chicago, IL, Valparaiso and Clarke Junction, and Valparaiso and Plymouth, IN. Added to these runs was a local between Fort Wayne and Valparaiso.
The purpose of these scheduled runs was to improve freight efficiency. Putting local passenger trains on set runs rather than running random extra trains was seen as the solution. Secondly, it made better use of the line’s double-track format, constantly seeking ways to maximize its freight capacity.
