The story
Origin of name
The source of the Wabash name was the Wabash River, a 475-mile-long (764 km) river in the eastern United States that flows southwest from northwest Ohio near Fort Recovery, across northern Indiana to Illinois, where it forms the southern portion of the Illinois–Indiana border before draining into the Ohio River, of which it is the largest northern tributary. The name Wabash is an anglicization of the French name for the river, Ouabache. French traders named the river after the native Miami tribe's word for the river.
Corporate history
Merger tree
The Wabash Railroad resulted from numerous mergers or acquisitions as shown by this table:
Norfolk Southern Railway (1982)
Norfolk and Western Railway (1964)
Wabash Railroad (1941)
Wabash Railway (1931)
Wabash Railroad (1889)
Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway (1904–1908) later Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway
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Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad
Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway (1879)
Council Bluffs and St. Louis Railway (1877)
Toledo, Wabash and Western Railway
Great Western Railway of Illinois 1865
Sangamon and Morgan Railroad 1853
Northern Cross Railway 1847
Illinois and Southern Iowa Railroad 1865
Quincy and Toledo Railroad 1865
Toledo and Wabash Railway 1865
Wabash and Western Railroad 1858
Toledo and Wabash Railroad 1858
Toledo, Wabash and Western Railroad 1858
Lake Erie, Wabash and St. Louis Railroad 1856
Toledo and Illinois Railroad 1856
Warsaw and Peoria Railroad 1865
Pre-Civil War
The name Wabash Railroad or Wabash Railway may refer to various corporate entities formed over the years using one or the other of these two names. The first railroad to use only Wabash and no other city in its name was the Wabash Railway in January 1877 which was a rename of the Toledo, Wabash and Western Railway formed on July 1, 1865. The earliest predecessor of the Wabash System was the Northern Cross Railroad, which was the first railroad built in Illinois.
The Toledo and Illinois Railroad was chartered April 20, 1853, in Ohio to build from Toledo on Lake Erie west to the Indiana state line. The Lake Erie, Wabash and St. Louis Railroad was chartered in Indiana on August 19 to continue the line west through Wabash into Illinois towards St. Louis, Missouri, and the two companies merged August 4, 1856, to form the Toledo, Wabash and Western Railroad with a total length of 243 miles.
The company soon went bankrupt and was sold at foreclosure. The Toledo and Wabash Railroad was chartered October 7, 1858, and acquired the Ohio portion October 8. The Wabash and Western Railroad was chartered on September 27 and acquired the Indiana portion on October 5. On December 15, the two companies merged as the Toledo and Wabash Railway. That company merged with the Great Western Railway of Illinois, the Illinois and Southern Iowa Railroad, the Quincy and Toledo Railroad and the Warsaw and Peoria Railroad to form the final Toledo, Wabash and Western Railway.
Post-Civil War
It was this group of railroads that formed the beginning of the Wabash System with the rename in 1877.
Later mergers and reorganizations formed the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway on November 7, 1879, and Wabash Railroad on August 1, 1889. Financier John Whitfield Bunn was one of several capitalists who were instrumental in the consolidation of the Wabash System.
The first repair shops were located in Springfield, Illinois along South 9th Street. These were the primary back shops from the mid-1800s to 1905. In 1873, the former shops of the St. Louis, Kansas City and Northern (formerly the North Missouri Railroad) at Moberly, Missouri were inherited, which employed about 1,200 and built most of the system's freight and passenger cars. However, in 1902 President J. Ramsey Jr. announced that a new shop site was needed to handle the increased demand for repairs. Seventy-eight acres of land were purchased on the east side of Decatur, Illinois, which became the primary back shops until the end of steam. By the 1920s the East Decatur Shops employed 1,500 workers, with an additional 1,000 employed in the adjacent yard and offices.
Early 20th century
In 1904, the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway was formed and acquired control of the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad, giving the Wabash access to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the final step in an attempt to break the near-monopoly of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) and New York Central Railroad for traffic to the east. However, the Wabash had overextended itself, and the WPT went bankrupt in 1908; it would later become part of the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway. The Wabash Railroad itself was sold at foreclosure July 21, 1915, and reorganized October 22 as the Wabash Railway.
The Pennsylvania Railroad acquired loose control of the Wabash in 1927 by buying stock through its Pennsylvania Company. In 1929 the Interstate Commerce Commission charged the PRR with violating the Clayton Antitrust Act. The ruling was appealed, and in 1933 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the control was for investment only and did not violate the act.
The Wabash Railway again entered receivership on December 1, 1931. The Wabash Railroad, controlled by the PRR, was organized in July 1941 and bought the Wabash Railway on December 1.
Late 20th century
In fall of 1960, the PRR agreed to a lease of the Wabash by the Norfolk and Western Railway.
The PRR's Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad assumed control of the Wabash's Ann Arbor Railroad on December 31, 1962. On October 16, 1964, the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (Nickel Plate Road) merged into the Norfolk and Western Railway, and the N&W leased the Wabash and Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway.
On March 31, 1970, the Pennsylvania Company exchanged its last Wabash shares for N&W common stock; that stock was later divested as a condition of the 1968 merger into Penn Central Transportation. Because it was only leased, as opposed to merged outright, the Wabash Railroad continued to trade its stock on the New York Stock Exchange.
The N&W and the Southern Railway merged in 1982, although the Wabash continued to exist on paper. NS formally merged the Wabash into the N&W in November 1991.
From Wikipedia’s article on Wabash Railroad, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3