Is the old Pennsylvania Railroad Madison Hill line still in use? It had a grade of 5.73 percent, so it was extremly steep. The Prr used SD9 helpers on trains going up the grade.
Currently mothballed. City or county owned now.
The original " Madison Hill" line was (IIRC) 5.89%, and the 0-10-0 Reuben Wells was built ( in 1876(?) to handle this grade. I think it is currently residing in a museum somewhere in Indiana(?).
In 1953 the PRR bought from EMD SD-7's #8588 and 8589 they had 567 engines, and 65:12 gears specifically to handle the grade on 'Madison Hill' (later they carried different unit numbers under Penn Central/Conrail) .
They were weighted (ballasted) from the factory to something like 370,000 lbs. They did not come originally with MU connections, they also had a rail washer system installed, this was due to leaves that accumulated on the rails(?).
Only one unit at a time was assigned to work Madison Hill, with the second unit being rotated in, and out of the assignment (due to a maintenance cycle(?).
I recall that at one point after they were disposed of by Conrail, at least one, and possibly both units went to the TRAA in St, Louis(?)
searching for some photos on google, I found this thread..
http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/p/72275/876633.aspx
Edit: since internal links do not work well..
http://tinyurl.com/z659abz
I think there was another article on this in Trains back in the 1980's or so, but it's not coming up in the Magazine Index. Perhaps it was a 'sidebar' to a main article about another subject.
- Paul North.
Paul, it seems to me that I became aware of the hill sometime in the fifties--through a short item in Trains way back before some of our posters were born. There may well have been another item in the eighties.
Johnny
Johnny, that article was in the early 1960s--it came after I began reading the magazine regularly. Use "steepest" to search.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
Paul_D_North_Jr "America's steepest railroad - Madison Hill, 5.89 percent" by Sulzer, Elmer G. from Trains, July 1962, p. 34 branch grade Indiana prr
I rode the Hill as as kid, with my brothers and cousins in the middle 60's. My grandfather was a clerk in Columbus IN, and called in a favor from the engineer that day. I remember he told us to not blow the horn within the cut, for fear of bringing down rocks. I was too young to photograph anything, but do have a cone shaped water cup from inside the cab. Yeah, pretty fun and the start of my serious passion for trains.
The Reuben Welles is in the basement of the Indianapolis, IN Children's Museum and is on display every day, behind the Carousel.
All trains on the Madison Hill grade operated with the locomotive on the south end so if a coupler were to break, the freight car wouldn't wind up in the Ohio River. In the days of steam, usually H class 2-8-0's, the locomotive faced north so there always was water over the crown sheet above the firebox. Trains were short and retainers were set on the freight car brakes before the descent. Tough mountain railroding!
A regret of mine was never railfanning the Madison line. I had 2 years of chances as I attended nearby Hanover College from 1975 - 1977 (10 minutes down river). Spent time in Madison, primarily at Hinkles, a renowned diner, but that was usually late night.
I was a railfan at the time with a dandy 35mm Pentax. Also failed to railfan the nearby North Vernon to Louisville B&O line. Would like a re-do on those two.
"Ghost Railroads of Indiana" by Elmer Sulzer has a nice chapter on the line with photos of the grade. Interesting book...picked it up at a garage sale for $2 along with several books on NYC.
Ed
MP173A regret of mine was never railfanning the Madison line. I had 2 years of chances as I attended nearby Hanover College from 1975 - 1977 (10 minutes down river). Spent time in Madison, primarily at Hinkles, a renowned diner, but that was usually late night. I was a railfan at the time with a dandy 35mm Pentax. Also failed to railfan the nearby North Vernon to Louisville B&O line. Would like a re-do on those two. "Ghost Railroads of Indiana" by Elmer Sulzer has a nice chapter on the line with photos of the grade. Interesting book...picked it up at a garage sale for $2 along with several books on NYC. Ed
Didn't know anything about Madison Hill and its operation when I worked the B&O's WS Tower at Watson, IN in the Summer of 1966, also worked North Vernon that Summer.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Here is an additional story to add to the 'tales' of the M&I;'s Madison Hill Incline, also, shown in it,is a pen and ink drawing of the locomotive(PRR's) Rueben Wells; now residing in the Children's Museum in Indianapolis.
See linked @ https://www.jeffersoncountylocalhistory.org/riverbuildingtherailroad
MP173A regret of mine was never railfanning the Madison line. ...
By luck I got to "railfan" the line in the early 1970s as a geology student on a field trip that included the rock cut that the line went thru.
The line is, or recently was, still open from North Vernon to the north side of Madison where a plastics manufacturer is/was located. I have it as Madison Railroad (CMPA), running maybe once per week. Most of the line appears to be used for car storage, with few if any on-line customers outside North Vernon. Most of the car storage is on tracks that snake through the former Jefferson Proving Ground site.
- Ed Kyle
Didn't Penn Central have to relay abandoned track into Madison at some point to deliver a large generator there? (A vague memory)
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