On Sunday, May 5, after a most enjoyable visit to St. Louis, where we rode and photographed the St. Louis Loop trolley and accomplished some sightseeing (as well as visiting with some friends), we were back on the road again, heading for Louisville, where we would bunk and spend some time with Clare's first cousin Bob and his family. We would break our journey at French Lick, Indiana, which would add an extra 50 miles to the 290 mainly along route I-64 between our origin and destination. I suspect you can figure out why we took the detour. If not, the answer is to visit a streetcar line in the middle of the state. French Lick is a resort town with a population of about 1,800, and is anchored by the French Lick Springs Hotel, which dates back to 1845. The tramway links the spa with another hostelry from the same era, the West Baden Springs Hotel, a little under 1½ miles away and since 2006 under the same ownership. The resorts, which originally advertised the curative effects of the locality's mineral springs, were mainly known for their illegal gambling, which attracted trainloads of politicians, sports figures, entertainers and gangsters, who patronized the local clubs and casinos. The area did have its ups and downs over the past century and a half, and is now flourishing again as a result of the legalization of gaming. But there were other periods of great popularity, including right after the turn of the 20th century, during the "Roaring '20s" and then again in the 1980s. During its heyday French Lick was served by branches of both the Monon Railroad (Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville) and the Southern Railway. A trolley line connected the two towns from 1903 to 1919, then again from 1984 to 2002, with the present one inaugurating service in 2014. While the first two had trolley wire, the current incarnation uses an electric streetcar whose propulsion was converted to diesel power. Its single car originally was Brill-type No. 313, built in the shops of the Companhia Carris de Ferro do Porto in 1931, and purchased for the 1984 version of the service after it had become surplus in Portugal. Renumbered as car 1, it has been air conditioned, with much of the equipment being placed in its new ersatz deck roof. Here are some photos of the operation, taken along the 1.3 miles of single track. We work our way from the current southern terminal at the Casino of the French Lick Springs Resort to West Baden Springs, basically along a route that looks like a stylized upside down and backwards capital "L."
Above and below: The terminal of the line is at the Casino of the French Lick Springs Resort. In the upper view, passengers en route to the West Baden Springs Hotel, probably to partake in a late lunch, prepare to board the streetcar from a high-level platform. Below, the car is just rounding the curve, preparing to come to a halt. The operator will make sure the passengers are comfortably seated and advise them of the rules for riding, which mainly consist of "No Smoking," before taking up his position at the other end of the car. The construction in the background is for an addition to the resort's Event Center that will contain a sports bar and a large number of additional guestrooms.
Car 1 heads out alongside the hotel's access road. The flag is at half staff because of the death of retired Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, who passed away on the previous Sunday..
Toward the other end of the line, West Baden Avenue is in the foreground of this photo of the four-wheeler
returning to French Lick from its outer terminal
The line's outer terminal, at the West Baden Springs hotel, looks a little like a traditional small-town railroad station
The car runs back and forth from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week, and its location and movement can be tracked from a link on the hotel's website. There is no fare and the operator indicated he makes about 60 trips on the average day. In addition to the streetcar line, the Indiana Railroad Museum (the other IRM) operates a tourist service, including a mix of conventional train rides and special event excursions with food and beverages about three days each week. Its operating entity is officially the French Lick, West Baden & Southern Railroad (FLWB&S), but it is also known as the French Lick Scenic Railway (https://frenchlickscenicrailway.org/). To place the operation in perspective, here is a little history of the railroad branch lines that once served French Lick with passenger trains. The Monon (officially the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville--CI&L) once operated a full schedule of varnish from Dearborn Station in Chicago to Indianapolis and Louisville via Monon, Indiana, where the two lines separated. Its schedule included trains named the Thoroughbred, Hoosier and Tippecanoe. Toward the end of the 19th century the road built an 18-mile long branch south from Mitchell, Indiana (where it was crossed by the Baltimore and Ohio) to French Lick. Passenger service from Chicago to French Lick, including through sleepers, operated until 1949; in 1967 the entire railroad went freight only. The Monon was especially famous for its service to French Lick/West Baden on Kentucky Derby weekend, carrying horse players and revelers before and after the event. I suspect there may have been privately owned varnish on those trains, which lasted until 1971, the year the railroad was taken over by the Louisville & Nashville (now CSX). Much of the Monon is now abandoned, with the French Lick branch an early casualty, gradually cut back and torn up between 1976 and 1981. The Southern Railway constructed a 32-mile branch north to French Lick/West Baden from Huntingburg, along its St. Louis-Louisville mainline. The branch, which continued south from Huntingburg to Evansville, also had passenger service, although it never caught on like the Monon's, and was laid to rest in 1937. Operating end to end with the CI&L, it used trackage rights for the short distance to reach the station, and to continue a little further from French Lick to West Baden. It shared a wye and storage yard between the two towns with the Monon, just a short distance beyond the station, which is the starting point for today's diesel-hauled museum operations. The streetcar uses a short portion of the Monon's right-of-way, including the eastern portion of the wye, while the museum operates its passenger trains southward along the ex-Southern through Hoosier National Forest. Most excursions last about 90 minutes and run for a distance of about 10 miles each way, traversing the museum-owned FLWB&S toward Dubois. Occasionally trains are operated 15 miles further to Jasper, over the rails of the Dubois County Railroad, which is a common carrier also owned by the museum. The short line leases the remaining 7 miles of the Southern's old branch from the Norfolk Southern, which is its connection to the rest of the world at Huntingburg.
Above and below: Two views of 1925-built No. 97. The 2-6-0 was constructed by Baldwin for the Mobile & Gulf Railway. It did not appear to be operable when I photographed it (above). I found the view below on the internet.
I took the next three photos of the Indiana Railroad Museum at the French Lick station, which also serves as the organization's offices.
The museum seems to like the paint scheme of the former Northern Pacific Railroad, as after having purchased Vista dome car 550 it applied the same colors to GP9 No. 465. The familiar two-tone green livery was featured on such varnish as the NP's North Coast Limited and Mainstreeter. The 465 was originally built for the Southern Pacific in 1959.
Above and below: Two views of French Lick Scenic locomotive No. 4, which still retains its Algers, Winslow & Western Railroad (AW&W) colors and lettering. The Alco RS-1 was built in 1947 for the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic Railway. The passenger car came from the Rock Island Line's Chicago area commuter service, but the museum also has some ex-Erie Railroad Stillwells. The nearby 20-mile long AW&W is a short-line mining railroad now owned by the Norfolk Southern.
In researching the history of the streetcar line, I had a great deal of trouble locating data and photos of its predecessors, so I asked superb researchers Dennis Lamont and Bradley Knapp (both of whom I met for the first time in 2019) for help. They came through just as I knew they would and supplied much of the information that follows. The photo of French Lick and West Baden car 1 below was copied from the hotel's website. The 1.90-mile long line operated from 1903 to 1919. Dennis reported that the 1914 McGraw Electric Railway Manual indicates that the company owned two cars.
Brad superimposed the routes of the three incarnations of the streetcar line onto Google Earth. The original line is shown in blue, while the current one is in green. The northern terminal of both was at the West Baden Springs Hotel, but the original route operated on streets to the east of the Monon right-of-way, specifically along Indiana Avenue and Broadway Street, which are now State Highway 56. The red line describes the route of the streetcar service that ran from 1984 to 2002 as the Springs Valley Electric Railway. The electrified line followed the right-of-way of the former Monon, which had been abandoned in 1976. Dennis and Brad found these photos.
The car used today is an extensively rebuilt version of former Porto, Portugal No. 313, which was the unit that served the line during the 18 years of its existence, from 1984 to 2002. The series was called "Fumista" because the car windows could be removed in hot weather, which permitted the company to allow its riders to smoke. We would probably call them convertibles. Anyway, the 16 units, 300-315, were built in the company's workshops during 1930 and 31. As can be seen they are missing the iconic deck roofs that characterized Portuguese Brill cars built in Philadelphia and then locally in Portugal in earlier decades, which were the ones that tended to be imported into the U. S. for heritage operations like in Memphis and Yakima. Note the arches over West Baden Avenue in the photo at right. They still exist today as shown below.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.